The Iowa Caucus is Monday. Lay Down Your Marker.

Come Groundhog Day, we will be having our first caucus of the Election Season. Wait, what’s a caucus?, you ask. Well, NPR has an explainer.

The gist is that they put everybody in the gym at the local high school. Then they have people give the pledge of allegiance and people give impassioned speeches on behalf of their preferred candidates and then they have everybody mingle over into groups supporting particular candidates. If any group (for example, the group supporting Mike Gravel), has less than 15% of the people there, they break up the smallest group and they say “join one of the others!” and then the people in the other groups yell stuff like “join us, we have brownies!” and then they do a recount of the groups. If there are any sub-15% groups left, they play the game again until every group has at least 15% of the people in the gym in it.

And then they count up numbers, do proportional distribution of delegates, and then, among the groups, pick delegates who have to take a day off from work to go to the thing where they pick the person who will be going to the National Convention.

So here’s a link to Nate Silver, our Numbers Guy, and his take on the Iowa caucuses.

The thing I notice is that there are 3 people with numbers north of 15%. Two people just barely north of 20%. One just barely north of 15%. Everybody else, added together, is ~33%.

It’s that 33% (plus the undecideds!) that will decide the winner.

So my question, for you, is who wins Iowa? Who places? Who shows? (And remember: You can’t make fun of someone else’s picks without also posting your own!)

(Featured image is “Iowa” by ChrisYunker. Used under creative commons license.)