On January 4th, 2008 at 6:36 pm, MrScribbler said:

#17, RR –

Iowa has no monopoly on idiots. Look at California, where I live.

Well said!

Iowa has no monopoly on idiots. Look at California, where I live. I suspect most “voters” in this sate have just as much trouble counting…at least in English.

Actually, the “moronic, inbred hicks” I was referring to are the candidates.

But let’s face it: the anachronistic notion of “caucuses” is as flawed as the case against Ramos and Compean.

Enter booth. Make choice. Have choice recorded and counted.

Very simple.

Look, I’m not one to take such asinine comments personally, but let’s try to keep to higher level of discourse than this. I have come across several Iowans on this site who are strong conservatives and have great things to say.

Not a statistician so just crunching the numbers provided…

You (and others) are comparing the R turnout in 2000 (no caucus in 04) and D turnout in 2004. If you compare the D turnout in 2000 to 2008 it shows a 290% increase in participants.

4. Minimum vote received percentage or they don’t count and those voters must re-vote for another candidate … Talk about stacking the vote … nothing else one can say about that …

That’s just on the Democrat side. And all the people that feel the need to attack Iowan’s can just F off. We’re every bit as smart as the everyone else, probably smarter than the ones casting dispersions.

Amazing. Everyone is crowing about “big” victories in a state that probably lets farm animals vote to raise the number.

Besides, the “caucus” system is phony as a George Bush “idea.” I suspect those tallying the “votes” had to work barefoot so they could count past 10.

Why don’t we just wait for the primaries where ballots must be cast before we start attaching any significance to results?

They cajoled, they debated, they negotiated, and they outright argued. And in the end, the Democrati…

-About 350,000 total voters participated last night, which is about 15% of the voting-aged population of Iowa.

-About 67% of those voters were Dem, 33% Repub.

-For my county about 43% of voters are registered as Dem, 19% as Repub, and 37% as neither. (That is as of Dec., before all the switching that took place last night.)

For what it’s worth, I didn’t hear anyone in our precinct discussing switching to D to mess up Hillary’s support. (I don’t care about the outcome, I couldn’t bear to have the stain of a D on my record.) But there were several people there registering as R for that night because they were previously registered as undeclared or Green Party or something. And, I certainly saw enough signs and bumper stickers for Obama in my town to believe that he pulled it out without R voters switching to derail Hill.

I did hear some of the Dem caucusers discussing stealing the Romney signs from the Repub side though. Just saying.

1. Record turnouts? … Verifies my statements here for the last few days that a small percentage of the eligible voters are making decisions that affect the entire process … causing people to drop out of the races before most states even get the chance to vote in their primary election …

2. Many changed affiliations at the door to vote against Hillary? … still a suspicion at this point … not that I would ever want to see her in any office, let alone the White House … but the fact anyone even thought that way at all proves there is a massive opportunity in the process that could allow “cheating” of all sorts …

3. If you’re late you can’t vote and participate … that’s why the 80 year old man left early to be sure he was there at least 15 minutes before the scheduled start time … and then he still didn’t get to cast his vote … I have to wonder how many others may have met with the same situation across the state … would not have happened in a voting booth primary … vote at anytime during the day when polls are open and go back home … end of story …

4. Minimum vote received percentage or they don’t count and those voters must re-vote for another candidate … Talk about stacking the vote … nothing else one can say about that …

As for the numbers …

1. Total Participants

2004 = 211,666
2007 = 332,000

Percentage of increase = 57 %

2. Democrat Participants

2004 = 124,000
2007 = 218,000

Percentage of increase = 76%

3. Republican Participants

2004 = 87,666
2007 = 114,000

Percentage of increase = 30%

This was using the numbers in Michelle’s story above. Now … if as suspected by some there were people changing from (R) to (D) to vote against Hillary then maybe a part of the (D) increase was the (R) vote against Clinton.

Not a statistician so just crunching the numbers provided …

After the BTR show with Melanie Morgan and then Jenn of the Jungle, I surfed the networks and cable news and searched (not hard to do) the internet for the Iowa Caucus bloggers. Good thing I have a reader…saved hours and hours o searching….

Speaking of which, one caucus “captain” or “chair” or whatever said the vote was delayed because 40% (my arithmetic) of the attendees switched their party affiliation at the door, just so they could vote.

Gianni said:
I wonder how many Republicans, not really caring who won between the less than stellar candidates on the Republican side, switched to Democrat to try and derail Hillary before she got started…

This was actually discussed at my caucus. People really considered doing this. So I wonder if some did it. I wouldn’t know cuz you can only attend one. People can change party affiliation any time.