Politico To Go: Why is this political night different from all other nights? The Iowa caucus

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There are political campaigns and there is Iowa. For the past six plus months the state of Iowa has been inundated with political operatives, political ads, and candidate robo-calls all leading up to tonight’s caucus vote. 

People in Iowa did not go into voting booths to cast their ballots. In each Iowa voting precinct registered Republicans gathered in local schools, churches and community centers hear a representative from each candidate make a little speech. That is followed by discussion, arguments, cajoling (kind of like my house during Thanksgiving dinner. They are electing delegates to their county conventions, and each of the 99 county conventions will select delegates for both Iowa’s Congressional District Convention and the State Convention, which eventually choose the delegates for the National Convention in August. By time the state convention happens in mid-June the nominee is usually selected so the delegates usually rally behind the winner. In other words the Iowa caucus means very little.

So why have the candidates spent so much time in Iowa? There is an old political saying “there are only three tickets out of Iowa” In other words, usually after Iowa all but three candidates drop out. That will not happen this year. Usually after Iowa the focus is on New Hampshire as the first “real” primary, don’t look for that to happen. Mitt Romney has a huge lead in New Hampshire and the other candidates (except for Jon Huntsman) will give only cursory attention to the Granite state. This year it is more likely that the South Carolina primary will whittle the field down.

The expectation going into tonight was a three-way split between Romney, Paul and Santorum and the vote went almost as planned, a Romney/Santorum tie with Ron Paul coming in third.

The race came down to this, traditional conservatives leaned toward former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, Tea Party Republicans were split between Santorum and Ron Paul (the man who put they “Aryan” in Libertarian) and people whose first issue was electability favored Romney. In Iowa voters are allowed to declare their party affiliation the day of the caucus those voters went for Ron Paul. According to exit polls he only got 14% of the votes of people who were Republicans before tonight. Most of the next big state primaries are “closed” meaning they do not allow for last minute party switching—another reason why Paul will not be as successful in future states.

Romney got about a quarter of the vote in 2008 and about the same this time. On one hand it is a success for Romney because he barely spent any time in Iowa, only beginning to seriously campaign in the state two weeks ago, but on other hand it could also be seen as a failure as he wasn’t able to grow his percentage from 2008.

 

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