Talk:2008 Iowa Republican presidential caucuses

Can someone find a link for a 'how to' register/participate in this? I need to know if I have to register as a Republican to participate.--Shink X 20:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I think you do, but you can probably register immedately prior to it near or at the same location vote in it and then the next day the county election offices are open change your registration back to whatever it was previously. This assumes your not interested in becoming a delegate yourself to the higher level caucuses. Jon (talk) 20:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Straw polls?

This article says that the caucuses are straw polls, but Straw poll says that the term is used for an unofficial vote (e.g. Ames Straw Poll). So how can the caucuses themselves be straw polls if delegates are being actually elected? Kelvinc (talk) 05:19, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Because they are two separate processes. The poll taken of voters with blank sheets of paper is a presidential preference poll. Then they select delegates who are officially uncommitted. All caucus states for the Republicans are this way at the precinct level. The state party encourages the delegates to reflect the preference poll but there is no obligation that they do so. Thus, the delegates are elected by an order of magnitude fewer people than who participated in the "straw poll", because delegates are just volunteers to get to the county convention, who go to the congressional district convention, who go to the state convention, who then elect delegates to the national convention. And even at that point, delegates are unbound by party rule. The county convention is in March, and normally this doesn't matter since a nominee will have been selected two months after the Iowa caucus (in all past years). But it becomes interesting to do the math in a brokered convention and find out which one of those "uncommitted" delegates are secretly (or openly) committing for someone. Calwatch (talk) 10:49, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay that makes a lot more sense now. Thanks! Kelvinc (talk) 02:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

placement of the results

the results should be placed at the top so that the reader doesn't have to scroll down to find them. Kingturtle (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Dual votes - is this article now a WP:NPOV violation?

The article is written as if the Ames Straw Poll and the January 2008 caucuses are roughly equivalent in importance, something that (arguably) favors the Romney camp (which won the Ames poll). I don't know enough about the matter to be bold and rewrite the article, but would like to hear the opinions of other editors about this.

If the article were changed, the Ames poll should still be mentioned, but the January 2008 results should be much more prominent in the lead section, and the section with the Ames poll results should be below the section with the details of the January 2008 poll (compare and contrast), I think. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreeded with John Broughton (and I back Romney). Jon (talk) 20:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Keyes and Cox

None of the results at either the Des Moines Register, CNN, and The Green Papers show any votes for John Cox and Alan Keyes, who were apparently active candidates. Did Cox and Keyes get 0 votes? Marmaduque (talk) 19:52, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

It appears so as of that timestamp with 95% of precients counted. Last I heard of either of them campaigining though was for the 2000 primary. Jon (talk) 20:04, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

When you look at the Iowa GOP official web site, you don't find votes reported for either Keyes or Cox, but news articles clearly indicate a smattering of Keyes votes at individual precincts. Most likely those votes were discarded by the state party since they didn't file some paperwork. Calwatch (talk) 20:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that seems the likeliest explanation. Strangely enough, Tom Tancredo received 5 votes desìte the fact that he withdrew and endorsed Romney. The Washington Post says it's because his name remained on the ballot after he withdrew. But why would the party officials discard Keyes votes but not Tancredo votes? Marmaduque (talk) 21:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

First off, at most precincts, there are no "ballots" per se, only blank sheets of paper. Secondly, there was an official list of candidates on the Iowa GOP web site for some time, and at no time did Cox or Keyes show up on the list. You notice that all the candidates have their little logos, including Tancredo, who was a contender for some time, and reports show that precinct chairs still called for Tancredo supporters to give speeches because they were still on the Iowa GOP list. Keyes also was not on the straw poll ballot. Cox was on the Ames ballot but later stated that he would not compete in the early primaries, and the few media that were covering him lost interest when he gave his "concession speech" a few weeks later. Calwatch (talk) 05:01, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

According to a report on Keyes' website, his votes were apparently treated as write-ins because he was not among the official candidates listed by the IA Republican Party. I have added this information to the article. Marmaduque (talk) 16:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Final Results Table

IMO, the column about potential national delegates should be taken out, mainly because in updating the table to reflect all precincts reporting, I inadvertantly removed the sourcing for that, but also because it's speculation and different news sources were reporting different things last night. USAToday or Washington Post (can't remember which) had Huck 30, Mitt 7 and the rest with none; the previous citation of thegreenpapers had the current numbers which were far more spread out and even gave Giuliani a delegate despite getting less than 3.5%; and CNN was somewhere in the middle. I would take it out myself, but I don't want to mess up the table. Kingnavland (talk) 11:22 PM EST, January 4th, 2008, too lazy to log-in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.33.166.39 (talk) 04:21, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this. The 30 to 7 data comes from the Associated Press [1], by the way, which I regard as probably the most reliable source for this kind of thing if we are going to keep the delegate tally. --Goobergunch|? 07:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree and would prefer to go by the Iowa GOP rules, which state strict proportionality (linked above). It is best to keep it blank for now though. Calwatch (talk) 07:34, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

The only Iowa GOP rules I could find were [2], which only states that "the delegates usually feel obligated to follow the wishes expressed by the caucus-goers". I'm not sure where the strict proportionality claim is. --Goobergunch|? 08:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

results listings

For consistency and aesthetics, can we please use in this article the same results boxes that are used in Results of the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries? They look like this:

Iowa caucus
Candidate		%	State delegates	National delegates
Barack Obama		37.58%	940
John Edwards		29.75%	744
Hillary Clinton		29.47%	737
Bill Richardson		2.11%	55
Joe Biden		0.93%	23
Christopher Dodd		0.02%	1
Mike Gravel		0.00%	0
Dennis Kucinich		0.00%	0
Uncommitted		0.14%	3
Turnout		100.0	2,501

Thanks! Kingturtle (talk) 12:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)