Let’s fill in the board as to the results of your precinct and the experience.
End result in my precinct:
Delegates: Obama 4, Edwards 3, Clinton 2
Failed to be viable: Dodd (1 voter), Biden (2 or 3), Kucinich (0) and Richardson (about 20).
Obama in the end had 43% at first vote, 46% at second vote, but was just short of a 5th delegate.
Hillary Clinton did surprisingly poorly and had a very much older crowd; Obama was definitely the most racially and age-diverse candidate.
Our precinct had record turnout of nearly 400, compared with 189 four years ago, so we couldn’t even all fit in one room. As such, there wasn’t much debate or convincing, but we did pick up one Clinton supporter and a few nonviable candidate supporters. It was fun. The major candidates’ campaign groups were handing out cookies and candy.
We also snuck into the Republican room as they were finishing up. They do a “winner takes all” blind vote. Romney won by a sizeable margin (over Huckabee in 2nd).
I also had a report from family members in Ames; in their precinct, Obama had over 50%.
Obama did well here too. 47 attended – at least twice as many as 2004. A preference group needed 7 to be viable.
Edwards - 19
Obama - 16
Clinton - 12
Clinton had 9 to start. The Biden group wasn’t viable, and the Clinton group was closest to where the Biden people were sitting, so they moved to Clinton. Democracy in action!
Final delegate results, after the stupid math*, is 2 Edwards, 1 each for Obama and Clinton.
Oh, and we had several registered Republicans who changed their registration for the caucus.
We had an observer, a Californian attending George Washington University, studying political theory. He’s an Obama supporter but didn’t do any politicking. I enjoyed talking with him, and I think I’ve convinced him to watch The Wire. He was pumped about the results, and thought the caucus process was really interesting.
Our group was a nice mix of ages – not racially mixed though, as our precinct is 99.9% white.
I’m looking forward to the county convention on the 19th.
Number of delegates the precinct is allotted multiplied by 12 divided by the number attending. It doesn’t seem fair that someone with only 3 more votes than the next guy gets an additional delegate.
I can give you the Democratic results for Union Township, Fayette County: Two delegates to the county convention for Sen Edwards, one for Gov Richardson. That’s from a pretty provincial and conservative section of the state. Results in, for instance, Des Moines may be different. We had a pretty middle aged bunch. On the first division only Edwards was viable (had the necessary 1/6 of the people at the caucus). After the game of musical chairs Richardson had barely enough to give him one delegate so he got the remaining delegate. Sen. Clinton had little support, even for the second choice when the horse trading started in earnest after the first division.
At the first vote, my precinct had 10 for Biden, 18 for Richardson, 56 for Edwards, 89 for Clinton, and 98 for Obama. We also had a fair number of undecided.
Biden and Richardson were unviable, and the final ended up
116 - Obama for 4 delegates
100 - Clinton for 4 delegates
66 - for Edwards for 2 delegates.
We had a good chair, and I was home by 8:00 pm in spite of the fact that about twice as many people showed as they expected.
The local news here has been reporting Obama with a substantial, but not commanding, lead (37% to Clinton at about 31% and Edwards at 30%). I’m happy with how things have turned out tonight; Obama did better than I expected.
The experience itself was pretty horrible. Just a lot of sitting and standing around in a space that was definitely not large enough for the crowd. IMHO, good result though.