How Can This be Right - Iowa Caucus Results

According to the AOL Poll Results there were 116,114 Republican voters and only 2,497 Democrat voters...?

Barack Obama won the Democrat's poll with only 940 votes! that's only slightly more than the lowest ranked Republican, Duncan Hunter who got less than one percent of his party's votes.

How on earth could there be 46 times as many Republican voters???!!! Did the Democrats just forget to vote??

Maybe registered (R)'s just outnumber registered (D)'s in Iowa. Apparently by a lot.

reply to post by mythatsabigprobe


I believe it is because the Dems have a different way of caucusing, I think

those numbers reflect the dem delegates count for each and does not represent the total number of caucusers, I heard last night that the Dems had over 200k show up for the caucus last evening.

The republicans just tally individual caucus votes.

Jack is correct, the Democrats count the percentage of the delegate's votes while the Republicans count the actual number of delegate's votes.

Originally posted by ChrisF231
Jack is correct, the Democrats count the percentage of the delegate's votes while the Republicans count the actual number of delegate's votes.

How does that work? The total votes cast for Obama as per the aol link in the OP is 940. 38% of total votes cast.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


They explained the way that the Democrats caucus and it was certainly different. I will try to explain.

Or better yet, I found a place which completely explains the Iowa caucusing procedures:

How the Democratic and Republican Presidential Caucus Work for Iowa Participants.

Democrats and Republicans will participate with their own party members exclusively to decide their presidential preferences for the 2008 election. It should be noted that the Democratic party was the first party in Iowa to initiate the Caucus procedure. The Republican party followed with a Straw Poll.

This should explain the numbers for everyone


ED: link to the explanation of the process

[edit on 1/4/2008 by JacKatMtn]