Talk:2008 United States presidential election in Iowa

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Democratic caucuses

2008 United States presidential election in Iowa was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 24, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
February 11, 2008	Good article nominee	Not listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on January 10, 2008.

Current status: Former good article nominee

Up to the minute revision

Wikipedia is not a news site; it's an encyclopedia. Don't both with the results until the final ones are given.--Bedford (talk) 02:15, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok its settled then, nobody edit anything until November 5th--mitrebox (talk) 05:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

March 15th County Conventions & Popular Vote Count on CNN

There's the county convention on March 15th, which I'll be attending as a bystander. Something could be mentioned about this.

Also, there appear to be vote totals at CNN.com for Iowa. This isn't the first time that the media have got it wrong, only to be corrected later. Just looking at the Linn County results at CNN, it definitely looks like a vote total. I'm pretty sure that these are the sign in sheet totals: when people attended the caucus on Jan 4th, everyone was required to sign in with their name, address, and mark who they supported.

It makes sense. The delegate totals were called in (there were 10 delegates at my precinct, 360+ people). The sign in sheets would take quite a while to count.

I'd be willing do sum the data from CNN in a spreadsheet and/or find the results somewhere else so that we could have a popular vote total.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=IA

C. Nelson (talk) 04:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's a good thing you found these numbers from CNN, because that would really be helpful. Maybe this should go as a subsection under "Results." I'll see if I can get some more information to work with ASAP.--Dem393 (talk) 03:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Potential National delegates

How are the delegates alloted calculated? If it is a percentage from the 57 total delegates Obama should have 22 delegates, not 16; and 17 for Clinton and Edwards. Is it not 57 delegates? Is there a different way to calculate, CNN says we should scrap the ones with less than 15%, done that... changes nothing. Also, if my calculations are righ(they are rounded, since I can't think of a way to send 0.45 of a delegate) what happens to the 1 delegate that is not alloted to anybody because of the rounding. I think this is a important thing to elucidate in this and other related articlesChico (talk) 05:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are 45 pledged delegates for Iowa and 12 unpledged delegates. These are further broken down such that each Congressional District is allocated a certain number of delegates, as well as the state at-large. I find that [1] explains it quite well, although I disagree with that pages' calculations; I went through and calculated the results (based on the provided county data) myself and found data in agreement with the CNN figures. --Goobergunch|? 09:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article should directly state the reason for Clinton getting one more national delegate than Edwards dispite coming in third behind her in state delegates. "Due to the system of allocating delegates from the county to state conventions" is extremely vague. Jon (talk) 20:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added a bit of explanation there, although I'm not sure there's a good way to cite it. --Goobergunch|? 08:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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) 10:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

the first person of African descent?

I'm not much of a Wikipedia editor, so I thought I'd bring my issue up here rather than make a change immediately. The first paragraph states:

Of the eight major Democratic Presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois received the most support from Iowa Democratic caucus-attendees, making him the first person of African descent of any party to carry the caucus.

I understand it can be a touchy issue, but black American or African American would work better than person of African descent. It's generally accepted (especially by evolutionary biologists) that all humans are of African descent. The Wikipedia entry for Barack Obama describes him as African American, so I think that should be used here as well. --Sdcrym (talk) 21:17, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think what happened is it was originally "African American", but then someone cut "American" to change it to just "African" because he's so immedately of African descent. (This would probably be hard to explain, but 1st and 2nd generation immigrates from Africa generally aren't regarded as "African American" in the South at least. In fact while I was visting my parents sunday school class during the holidays outside Atlanta it was mentioned that the church (predominately White) has more "African" members than "African American" members. ) Jon (talk) 19:06, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This article is about a subject which is (technically) currently on-going and thus meets one of the Quick Fail Criteria. Please re-nominate when the event in question is concluded. -- jackturner3 (talk) 14:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with this decision. The Iowa caucuses have concluded, and the media is no longer focusing on this event. It is unlikely that the caucuses are going to have any further effects on the Democratic presidential nominating process.--Dem393 (talk) 00:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the review by the previous editor, I too respectfully fail the article but on different grounds. Firstly, the prose is wordy at times. There are also too many transitional words. Secondly, there were two gaps in referencing. I believe it needs to be verified that Obama was the first African American to win the caucus. See http://www.vibe.com/news/news_headlines/2008/01/barack_obama_wins_iowa/. The line: "Most caucus goers also said that Obama was strong in both of these areas, which is an indication of his appeal in Iowa." is more opinion than fact, and needs to be sourced or removed. Thirdly, and most critically, is the large amount of information that has been left out of the article. There is little mention of the actual campaign, the candidates, debates, positions, amount of money spent on advertising, types of ads, detail in candidate messaging, what it meant to the candidates, etc. Some of what was mentioned about the economy in the economic impact section doesn't really belong there but in some sort of issues section perhaps. Fourthly, there probably should be a whole section on the after, not just a few sentences. And finally, the lead to the article lacks excitement or a summary of some of more interesting parts of the article. Please see Good Article Criteria section one. Thank you all for your efforts one this page. I look forward to seeing it elevated to good article status once these changes are made.User:calbear22 (talk) 09:23, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I will see to it that I get this done ASAP.--Dem393 (talk) 02:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

County Convention Results

It would seem Obama has taken some of Edwards delegates. I've expressed this by bracketing the old delegate counts and adding a note below the table. Andareed (talk) 00:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By the Green Pages Clinton drops a delegate :-) ... they are very funny. --Subver (talk) 00:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They must know something everyone else doesn't. *shifty eyes* Andareed (talk) 00:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops...maybe they were right? :-) --Subver (talk) 10:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Missing state delegate

What happened to the 2,501st state delegate? The total for the first contest is 2,501 but for the second one it is 2,500. – Zntrip 04:07, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Precient delegates aren't County delegates. Jon (talk) 17:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

District Results Total's don't add up

The District Results Total percent (by adding Obama + Clinton + Edwards) doesn't come close to 100%. Either there's a line missing (uncommited?) or else some of the results aren't in yet. Jon (talk) 18:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed - they were meant to be just percents of the delegates. Andareed (talk) 20:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

=== Removed Economic Impact Section

Irrelevant and dated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.199.158.54 (talk) 17:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Republican 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

I agree with this. The 30 to 7 data comes from the Associated Press [2], 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

The only Iowa GOP rules I could find were [3], 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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