Today, Democrats and Republicans will cast the votes in the Iowa Caucus to choose whom they want to represent the respective political parties for president of the United States. In 99 county conventions across the Hawkeye state, partisans will convene in just under 1,700 precincts in churches, recreation centers and schools to elect delegates for each party’s respective candidates. These delegates, in turn, then cast their ballots through a series of votes over the course of the evening.
Democrats and Republicans have different procedures to accomplish the same goal by the end of the evening: Name a winner of the Iowa Caucuses for each party.
The map of Iowa, a state whose population noted by the US Census Bureau in 2014 to be half that of Tennessee’s – just over 3.1 million – could be used to play checkers. The state, 310 mile wide and 199 miles long, has almost all of its counties drawn in squares or rectangles. Without question, the science of grassroots politics has been refined in this geography in the heart of these United States.
Championed to be the first location for ballots cast every four years in the presidential primaries since 1972, Iowa is always identified with rural agricultural life, yet, manufacturing remains the state’s largest economic driver.
Interesting to our state, the outcome of the Iowa Caucus is a good indication as to the Volunteer State’s voting.