Thanks for this report!

No problem.. I plan on going in 2012 or 2016 depending on
the outcome of 2008 and the candidates.

The thing I found the most interesting is that delegates are given to precincts based on thier voting for democrats in previous races. Which can make the horse trading and negoitating so fun.

Thus there were storys of smaller precincts with 40 people show up and 5 delegates to distribute. So you only need 8 people per delegate. But only need 6 people to get viable and receive a delegate.

Or in my case, we had 107 people and 10 delegates and took 16 to get a delegate. In these precincts the horse trading is fun and and exciting.

But in Des Moines and other heavily republican areas, it was not uncommon to find precincts with 500 caucusing for 5 delegates. A ratio of 100 supporters for 1 delegate and you need 75 supporters to be viable.

In those caucases, the horse trading is harder, and virtually impossible. Its too busy and too hectic to get anything really done. Thats where having the campaigns calculate the best outcome to throw thier supporters too.

This is what makes Iowa caucus so odd.. and defiantely not indicitive of the raw voter count. Its also why a tier 2 candidate can affect the outcome, with only 7-8% of the vote.

Be it Gephardt in 2004 putting the screws to Dean and giving Kerry an unexpected jump, or Richardson doing it to Clinton and giving Obama the jump.

Charles

Does Richardson have enough funds to stay in the race?

Not seriously anyways.  I think Richardson wants to stick around until Nevada to try to make himself look viable for VP.  Ain't happening, though.

I thought the conspiracy theory was that Richardson was a Clinton plant to split the anti-war vote and help Hillary.

because of how delegates are awarded, based on number of participants in previous caucus.   Thus a caucus with a huge additional turnout for Obama would in no way be reflected beyond the number of delegates in that caucus.

What I have heard from a variety of sources on the ground, including some working for Clinton, was that this much more like a primary than a caucus, and that the actual numbers of support of those who participated, had it been measured as a statewide primary of individual voters, would have shown Obama with a lead of at least 20 points.

What you are seeing is the phenomenon of additional voters being drawn into participation.   Clinton got a few older women, Edwards drew some people who had been hard hit economically.   But Obama drew in huge numbers of younger voters, and some of them managed to drag parents along with them.

If the Rasmussen poll released today is any indicator - and remember, it is the first poll done ENTIRELY AFTER the caucuses and shows Obama with a 10 point lead - we will soon understand how understated the percentage of State Delegate Equivalents actually was - that's what the percentages from IA are,not of voters.  

Please note - I am NOT writing this as a partisan for or against any current candidate.  I had endorsed Vilsack, which I am sure was his kiss of death - he dropped out less than a month later (and endorsed Clinton).  

I sincerely doubt that orders from the Richardson campaign had anything over a 1% difference in State Delegate equivalents state wide.  Nice theory, but many reports from other caucus sites show any major effect from such a directive.

Peace.

they were done on a selected site basis, the way exit polls have traditionally been done.   But as far as I know the model used for the precincts selected was based on previous models of turnout, and thus may well NOT have accounted for the much heavier than usual turnout in the counties with large university populations, such around Ames, Iowa City, and DesMoinse (and also the Quad City area).  Thus even those initial preference figures probably understated the level of support Obama had.

Where in the world are you getting your numbers from.  There was an entrance poll, there was no "exit poll."  And in the one and only entrance poll, it looked like this:

Obama 35
Clinton 27
Edwards 23

"So what was the reason for Richardson to throw his supporters to Obama? This wasn't done to "help" Obama.. far from it.. it was to help Richardson in the long run. The real intent was to hurt the Clinton and Edwards campaigns, and have the media doubt themselves."

According to AP, here is the actual Iowa delegate allocation, and the overall count (they're counting superdelegates, too):

An AP analysis of the Iowa caucus results showed Obama winning 16 delegates, followed by Clinton with 15 and Edwards with 14. In the overall race for delegates, Clinton leads with 175, followed by Obama with 75 and Edwards with 46.

 http://www.rawstory.com/news/m...

So why did Clinton end up so close?  And with more delegates than Edwards?

because she won the 5th Congressional District, whereas Edwards didn't win any CDs.

Could the difference be Hillary getting more of the superdelegates (who can back anyone, regardless of what the caucus results are)?

"So what was the reason for Richardson to throw his supporters to Obama? This wasn't done to "help" Obama.. far from it.. it was to help Richardson in the long run. The real intent was to hurt the Clinton and Edwards campaigns, and have the media doubt themselves. "

And why else do candidates do things?  You seldom find the words "candidate" and "altruism" in the same sentence.

I suggest that either the above is true, and Richardson is trying to find the best way to win the nomination...which is fair enough.  Politics is a contact sport.

I think it is more likely that Richardson realizes that he has a real chance of being the VP nominee on an Obama or Edwards ticket, but none on a Clinton ticket.  Hillary will not want to being a former member of her husband's cabinet onto her ticket-brings back even more unfortunate memories.

This explanation though reuires immense delegate control and discipline.  I don't know that you can have that statewide.  I do think, however, there is an alternative explanation...simply that as opposed to 2004 a lot of delegates came out who are looking for change...and Edwards and Hillary don't quite get it.  So when Richardson got cut in various caucuses, the "change" voters who had gone for Richardson went to Obama.

Either way, it was surge that by design or accident benefitted Richardson AND Obama...

First off let me say.. Yes.. delegates were awarded by previous election turnouts for the precinct. The delegate count was in no way influenced by the amount that showed to caucus. It was affected by the way precincts voted in the last presidential election.

Trust me... In many cases the precinct captains didn't send their people to Obama.. I sure didn't. In many areas Edwards was the 2nd candidate of choice for the Richardson supporters. Actually overall statewide that was the norm for the Richardson supporter to have the 2nd choice as Edwards.

Which was why it was all the more confusing to me when I started hearing the office staff calling the precinct captains to tell them to have their supporters to go to Obama, if they were unviable. Especially since I came to Iowa to fight for the candidate I supported. To me it was really disheartening to hear it.. as I felt they should be telling them to try to get viable at all costs.

As to "Why" the campaign went that way I will admit is speculation on my part. But that's the only speculation.. Because the "If" isn't.. it happened. Maybe not in every precinct, but it happened.

My firm belief is that if the Richardson campaign had not told the precinct captains to switch at all and instead they were told to fight harder, they could have gotten viable in more precincts than they did. They could have also just told supporters to exercise the other options of just getting counted as unviable and not changing candidates or switching to "uncommitted". I believe if that had been the case, the results would have been much different. With Richardson getting up to 10% of the vote.. and the race between the top candidates being much closer. Looking at the numbers, I do think Obama may have come out the winner, but by a much smaller margin.. Still think Hillary would have come in 3rd though.

The reason getting viable really changes things.. is that even at only 15%  you get one delegate at least and that over the whole state would affect numbers. But because the Richardson campaign was seen by their captains as "throwing in the towel" so to speak before they even went into the caucus that put a kind of damper on many precinct captains, and took any fight they may have had in them out of them.

In our precinct a swing of 6 voters of the 107 changed it from 4 for Obama to 3 for Obama. Why this is important is delegates are rounded down. To get a 3rd delegate you have to get at least 2.5 in your math. In larger caucuses, a 50 person swing could affect the number of delegates a person got. All you have to do in some precincts is change your 2.43 delegate count to 2.51 and even in large caucuses that can be affected by as few as 10 delegates.

I have looked over the precinct by precinct breakdown.. Obama won larger in larger precincts where Richardson was unviable with at least 5-6% of the first round vote. That's a fact and not coincidence.

The final tally and difference was only about 200 delegates fro across the state.

Barack Obama  940  37.6%  
John Edwards  744  29.7%  
Hillary Rodham Clinton  737  29.5%  
Bill Richardson  53  2.1%  
Joseph R. Biden Jr.  23  0.9%  
Others  3  0.1%  
Christopher J. Dodd  1  0.0%  
Mike Gravel  0  0.0%  
Dennis J. Kucinich  0  0.0%

Just check out:
http://politics.nytimes.com/el...

Heavily populated areas had the largest swing for Obama and is where the least "Other Democrats" get delegates.. yet it the further flung areas the "Other Democrats" go up.. Why? The areas where "Other Democrats" are showing up are smaller caucuses where Richardson and Biden could get viable on relatively fewer numbers. In areas, where "Other Democrats" drop from 8-10% Obama jumps 10-25% !! It's because that extra 4-5% makes the difference between getting a extra 1 or 2 delegates in a precinct. So the winning percentage can jump 10-25% percent.

Do the math.. if Governor Richardson got 10% of the vote.. he would have had an additional 200 delegates.. the margin in which Obama won.  If he only got 7-8% of the vote, which was the average entry poll results. That would have been just at 200 delegates or about 150 more than he got.

Even Real Clear Politics had him averaging at 5.7% and Pollster at 6.1%.. Which considering the Richardson campaign had a good campaign organization in Iowa, 8-10% is about right. Yet at the end of the day we had 2.1%.. of the delegates.

Trust me unless you have been to Iowa, and looked at the numbers and been to a caucus where you have to have 15% to be viable and then you only count delegates and not "votes" you can't realize how much an extra 4-5% of support can really help in boosting the numbers.

Again I point out my precinct.. We had 107 at first count.. with Richardson getting 8 or 7%.. We convinced the 3 undecided, 2 Edwards, 1 Biden and a Hillary supporter to join us. The end result swung the Obama 40% victory into a 30% three way tie, with Richardson getting 10% of the vote verse 0%. That said we had 10 delegates..

You do a similar thing where there are only 5 delegates it makes a 20% swing in the results, 4 delegates a 25% swing.. etc.. and with a race where the top 3 are within a razors edge of each other. It doesn't take much to have one candidate pick up an extra delegate here and there (for a 25% gain in vote) With something as little as picking up an extra 10 supporters out of a group of 500. This is especially true of precincts that have an "extra delegate", like say precincts where there are 4 delegates and the top three are the only ones viable, and the only one to get delegates.. so that at point each gets one and the one with the highest delegate count gets the extra. This means 1 extra person no matter how large the caucus, can make a swing of 25% in the final outcome.

So again, if anyone thinks Obama won it "on his own" and "Iowa has spoken" they are as mistaken as the media. Unfortunately the media has a habit of turning perception into reality and they have FAR too much influence on the process.. and its only going to get worse.

I have to also saw if you are a political junkie.. (hmm... if your not why are you here ;) then you have to go to the Iowa caucuses next time.. it's a real eye opener and a real education.

Charles