What Did — And Didn’t — Go Down In The Iowa Caucuses

I see a lot of reporters shocked when [insert candidate here] doesn’t achieve viability in their precinct but … folks, that’s gonna happen a lot. With a bunch of candidates polling in the high teens or low 20s, there are going to be plenty of places where they have trouble hitting 15 percent, at least on first alignment.

Yeah, I also expected them to be higher, Nate! Especially with all the media attention on late deciders.

Tonight, as the caucuses begin at thousands of precincts across the state of Iowa, say a little prayer for the organizers who have spent the past few months scheduling event space, corralling volunteers, and conducting trainings. Ed Cranston, a retired Apple employee and the chair of Johnson County Democrats, is hoping nothing goes wrong on caucus night — but he’s prepared for glitches all the same.

A big one organizers could face is running out of materials, like registration forms or the presidential preference cards that will create a paper trail for the caucuses. “I have 15,000 additional presidential preference cards in the trunk of my car, just in case,” Cranston told me, laughing.

There’s also the potential for miscounts. Cranston will be caucusing in a high school auditorium this year, where he says it’s pretty easy to figure out how many people are sitting in a given section. But it’s much harder to count heads in crowded rooms when people are standing. Back in 2016, Cranston said, they had to do a recount at his precinct after realizing that the number of people counted in the Clinton and Sanders groups added up to more than the total number of people in the room. “If you’re in a real tight room, it can get frustrating,” he said. “That’s why the precinct chairs have to remember — if we need to do a recount, we’ve got methods for doing it. The important thing is just to keep a cool head.”