Did you know that a “Caucus” is a Native American Thing? It is. And the Iowa Caucuses start tonight in about an hour as I write this. It might look a little different than the original Native American thing.

No candidate that has finished in fourth place or lower in the Iowa Caucuses has ever become president, however, by my count, one of those individuals (a fourth placer) won the Republican nomination. Obama, Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Carter and Mondale were first placers; Dukakis came in third as did Clinton in one of his years, Carter came in second after “nobody” one year, and McGovern came in third after “Uncommitted” and Musky in the year that Nixon’s plumbers fixed the election. So, for the Democrats, coming in first or even second matters as you either win the presidency, win but have the election stolen, or come very close. For the Republicans, going back to 76, Ford came in first and lost, Reagan came in second and won (then came in first as unopposed sitting president). George Bush Senior was unopposed the first time he won, but then became a one termer, so the 92 caucus is meaningless for the Republicans. Dole came in first in 96 and sucked as a candidate, and then George W. Bush did a first place as a new candidate and a first place unopposed. Last election, for the first time in Repulbican history and the only time in the history of the caucuses, a forth placer won the nomination (John McCain) and he was trounced by Obama.

So if there is a pattern, it is this: The better you do in the Iowa Caucus, the better you will do in your own party’s process, but you are not absolutely guarnateed the nomination. It is interesting to note that last election, one could argue that there was a bit of a horse race between Obama and Clinton, but the order in the Iowa Caucuses was Obama, Edwards, Clinton (with Edwards and Clinton pretty much neck and neck).

Having said all that, remember that our data suck. The presidential elections are held every four years, and the Iowa Caucuses have been a factor only since 1972, so there is not a large sample.

In fact, that is a rarely acknowledged reality of American Politics that anyone who has ever tried to crunch the numbers on a spreadsheet can tell you. The infrequency of the presidential vote, the differences between the major parties in how things are done (mainly, culturally) and the changes over time in procedure means that it is very hard to compare across years, when it comes to primaries, caucuses, elections, and so on. The fact that there is a big difference between a year in which a sitting president is running vs. a year in which the seat is open, and a year in which there could have been a sitting president but said president does the “I shall not serve” thing, is also a factor. Essentially, you can take the number of years over which you are interested (say, “The last 100 years”) and divide by four (elections every four years) to get a sample of 25. Then divide that by two (every other election is likely a sitting president) to get 12.5 years … say 15, becuase there are one termers and assassinations now and then. Then divide that by two (giving half the years to each party) and you get 7 data points in your sample. Over a given century, you might expect about 7 elections to have the same party leading, same status of president, and a presidential election. But over that century, the nature of elections would have changed a great deal. Conventions have fundamentally changed in their role, the nature of the primary process has changed, and so on. And, on top of that, there are these years where everything goes flooey. When you’ve cut your sample size down to a handful, and one of the years left in your sample is 1968 when the nominee-apparent of the party likely to win the election is shot to death during the primary process, then really do have to toss out the p-values.

Given all these uncertainties, which years in the past look like the present year? Of the 10 years of Iowa Caucuses, there was a sitting Democrat in the race twice (Carter and Clinton). In 1980, the Democratic Party was in a bit of a state, and actually had a primary fight (Kennedy vs. Carter) and a convention with some uncertainty leading up to it. The Republicans that year looked a lot like this year, with a bunch of crazy-ass candidness (similar to this year only if one adjusts for crazy-ass inflation) who were somewhat divers, but not running in lockstep to the degree required by today’s Republican Party. So that year was quite different from this year. The second time, Clinton was in office, and he was not opposed in his party, though Ralph Nader was biting at his pinky-toe. In that year, 1996, the Republican field looked even more like it does today, in that there were a lot of very conservative candidates.

In 1980, the Republicans put forward Ronald Reagan, who came in second behind George H. W. Bush in Iowa. Reagan won. In 1996, the Republicans put forward Bob Dole, who came in first in Iowa. So those are your models to help anticipate and understand the meaning of today’s Iowa Caucuses.

But what is the Caucus like? What do they do in a Caucus?

The Iowa Caucus is not like the process here in Minnesota, which is better, which is why we say we are “above” or “on top of” Iowa (they think we refer only to the situation on the map, don’t tell them). Iowans gather into larger or small groups and there are speeches, then they carry out a primary but call it a caucus. There are no balloons or brightly colored tee-shirts and hastily made signs that say things like “Clinton-Education-Unions-Koch Brothers Suck” or “Obama-Peace-We Love Teachers” and so on, like we have.

Anyway, they “caucus” by putting their candidate’s name on a piece of paper and putting that in a ballot box, then they count the ballots. After the candidate is selected, they elect delegates to go to the next level of caucus meeting (this is more like Minnesota) and those delegates are culled to go to the congressional level, and they become convention delegates. The Iowans also decide party level things about other elected offices and various issues, mainly having to do with corn.

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