The Poetist

I have finally seen first-hand an Iowa caucus, that ground zero of American presidential politics. I saw it and it was entirely overwhelming. Caucus locations across the state were literally overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people that showed up on January 3rd. My caucus expected 85 people and 243 showed up! I arrived at the cafeteria to witness 3 separate lines of people crowding the doorways and another small mob of people signing up at the caucus and registering to vote. The caucus chair, whose home I had canvassed prior to this night, was obviously not prepared for the huge crush of people. When it became clear that the amount of caucus-goers would just not fit into the cafeteria we had to move to the auditorium. Comparing war stories later that night and checking in with my precinct captains in the following days it became clear that this was the trend across Iowa. I heard of caucuses expecting 200 people and having 800 show up!

Of the 10 Des Moines precincts I was responsible for I attended the one not with the most identified support for John Edwards, which would have been easy, but the one with the highest delegate count, which was certainly the most challenging.  A portrait in numbers:  The caucus in this precinct elects 8 delegates (people who go on to vote for a candidate).  In 2004 75 people were expected at the caucus and 85 people showed up.  According to entry polling none of them caucused for John Edwards.  For 2008 we were expecting 96 people to show up and caucus.  Given that number, we needed 15 people to be viable and gain 1 delegate.  Our goal was to have 54 people caucus for John and thus earn 5 of the 8 delegates.  Given that nobody caucused for John in 04, having 54 supporters was certainly aiming high, but we had also identified 25 supporters and 5 leaners so the chances of us getting 2 delegates looked certain and 3 wasn’t even a stretch.  Of course we couldn’t know exactly how many supporters we’d need until we knew the total number of people at the caucus but one of our math-oriented organizers created a chart for us that showed, given the total number of people in attendance how many supporters we would need to earn an extra delegate.  Armed with that information I felt confident that we could make a showing in this precinct.

And then I walked into the room.  If I wore hats I’d tip mine off to Barack Obama for mobilizing 100,000 first time caucus-goers state-wide.  As it were in my precinct, we estimated 96 and 243 people showed up; viability leaped from 15 to 37.   Unfortunately a few of our supporters didn’t show up and had we been able to absorb the Biden and Richardson people we still could not have been viable.  After weeks of build-up and hard work (months even, for others) it was certainly a sobering sight to behold.  But we did well.  Even having been outspent 6 to 1 we beat the Clinton machine, and I believe that speaks volumes about the strength of John Edwards’ message