How do the Iowa caucuses work? Here are the rules for Democrats’ first 2020 election
The Iowa caucuses are finally, mercifully here.
But what exactly is a caucus, how is it different than a primary, and what rules govern voting in the state that gets the first say in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination?
Here are some answers, including important information on key terms such as precincts, delegates, viability thresholds and more.
First, though, some logistics: The Hawkeye State’s caucuses begin at 7 p.m. CST on Feb. 3, according to the Iowa Democratic Party, which is running the show at 1,678 precinct locations across Iowa.
Registered Iowa Democrats who are old enough to vote on Nov. 3, 2020, are allowed to participate in the caucuses.
What is a caucus?
Iowa’s Democratic Party describes it like this way: Caucuses are just “neighborhood gatherings where Democrats meet to organize their precinct for the upcoming election, discuss the issues important to them, and declare their Presidential preference.”
Iowa City-based writer Shirley Wang explains in The New York Times that at “gyms, churches, libraries and schools across the state … each location executes a complicated choreography in which hundreds of people migrate around a room to aggregate in their candidate’s corner. Their presence is their vote.”
How is a caucus different than a primary?
A caucus is more like a meeting.
For example, the caucus chair opens up the event by welcoming those assembled and sharing a letter from the party chair. Then the chair will count up everyone in the room to figure out “the viability threshold” for groups supporting each candidate (more on that later.)
Primaries, on the other hand, look more like the kind of voting that people are used to on an Election Day, with paper ballots or machines and voting booths. New Hampshire’s primary — the first in the nation — comes eight days after Iowa.
So why hold a caucus instead of a traditional primary?
“Grassroots organizing is the most effective way to build the party bench and connect with voters, and the caucuses allow the [Iowa Democratic Party] to do both at the same time,” the party says.
When, how and where do the caucuses begin?
All precinct sites must open their doors by 6:30 p.m. — and anyone who isn’t lined up at the precinct by 7 p.m. won’t be allowed to caucus once the doors are shut, according to the party.
Some sites are quite a journey from Iowa, with satellite locations catering to Iowans who spend the winter in the sunnier climates of Arizona or Southern California. Others are in New York City and even in Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet country Georgia.
“From Paris to Palm Springs, Iowa Democrats will be caucusing on February 3, 2020,” Party Chair Troy Price said in a statement announcing the 99 satellite locations. “Our goal has remained steadfast throughout this process — to make these caucuses the most accessible in our party’s history, and the satellite caucuses do just that.”
What are the rules inside caucuses?
Once the number of people in the room has been counted, caucus organizers can figure out viability thresholds — the number of supporters a candidate needs to secure a delegate. Organizers also hand out numbered presidential preference cards to each caucus goer.
“The viability threshold for most precincts is 15 percent, and can be higher in precincts electing less than four delegates on caucus night,” the party explains — with a 16.66 percent threshold if a precinct has three delegates, and a 25 percent threshold if there are two delegates.
Next, precinct chairs can make speeches supporting their candidate of choice.
Then comes the first alignment — which is a formal way of saying that the voters in the roomstand with those who support the same candidate as their No. 1 choice.
Voters who find themselves in a group that hit the viability threshold have their preference locked in, according to the party. Those voters can fill out and sign a preference card and leave.
But for voters whose candidates failed to hit the viability threshold, the night goes on. They can realign and choose to support one of the groups that was viable in the first round — or they can try luring other voters whose first-choice candidates were non-viable, in hopes of making a non-viable candidate viable in the second round.
Voters can also “form an uncommitted or other group,” the party said.
“In the rare event of a second alignment with more viable preference groups than total electable delegates, the smallest group(s) would need to realign another time,” the party said.
For the caucus goers, the hard work of democracy is then over.
(Oh, but what if there’s a tie in the voting? It apparently varies by precinct, according to Wang, who writes in The Times that at a caucus training she attended she learned “some precincts … would flip a coin or draw straws to break a tie.”)
How are delegates awarded from the caucuses?
The final, viable candidates earn delegates (who are sent to county conventions in March) based on the number of supporters in their group, according to the Democratic party.
The formula for determining the number of delegates each candidate gets is this: The number of people in each group, multiplied by the number of delegates the precinct is electing — which is then divided by the total number of caucus attendees.
“Caucus Chairs and Precinct Captains will calculate the delegate allocation for each group and match their counts before reporting the results,” the party said.
Organizers also project “state delegate equivalents,” or “SDE,” which is “the projected number of state party convention delegates the candidates will receive based upon results of the precinct caucuses.”
So how does a candidate win the caucus?
The Iowa Democratic party says it doesn’t declare a winner, instead simply presenting results — but the party “encourages outlets to use the reported SDE number to determine a caucus winner.”
Those “SDE” numbers are projections, though: Delegates at the county conventions elect delegates to go to their district conventions and then state conventions, according to the ACLU of Iowa — and the actual 41 Iowa delegates to the national convention will be chosen at the state convention.
According to CNN, at the national convention in Milwaukee “a Democratic candidate needs 1,991 pledged delegate votes to win the party’s nomination on the first ballot.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 5:49 AM with the headline "How do the Iowa caucuses work? Here are the rules for Democrats’ first 2020 election."
