You might be a political junkie if…

By Carter Bundy

This one is for the real hard-core political – and math – junkies. If you’ve ever spent half an hour (or more) playing with one of those interactive Electoral College maps to figure out what combinations of states will yield 270 electoral votes, you’ll love how Iowa Dems select delegates to the national convention.

The Iowa Caucus serves the same general purpose as a traditional primary – to elect delegates in the presidential nominating process. That’s where the similarities end, though, and the craziness starts.

The precinct-based Iowa Caucus doesn’t even result in the election of state delegates to the national convention – only precinct delegates to the county caucuses. The counties, in turn, select delegates to the state party meeting, which then selects national delegates.

The numbers you’ll see on the evening of Jan. 3 won’t represent the percentages of people who came out to support candidates, but the percentages of delegates selected to go to the 99 county caucuses from the 1,784 precinct caucuses.

Kindergarten redux

When you show up at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 3, first you have the Pledge of Allegiance. Then some adult gives instructions.

Then you go off into a corner of the room with the other people who like your candidate, and they count you off, one by one. Literally. Yes, they have cookies and milk, too (At some of them, at least!).

Except for the absence of quiet time, it’s kindergarten all over again.

Enter the math dragons

Each precinct is assigned a certain number of delegates it gets to send to the county level, more or less in relation to its voting population.

The actual math behind the assignment of those delegates, though, is crazy. Let’s say you have eight delegates from a particular precinct, and a candidate has 14 percent of the participants standing in his or her corner.

That’s comfortably more than 1/8 of the votes, so he or she gets at least one delegate, si? Nope. If you’re in a precinct with six or more delegates, and you don’t have 15 percent of the vote, you’re deemed “not viable,” and your supporters go to one of the “viable” candidates in “re-alignment.” It’s only after the realignment that you calculate delegates.

That hurts two kinds of candidates. The first are second-tier candidates who may have 5, 10 or even 20 percent of the people behind him or her, but don’t get over 15 percent in most precincts.

Gov. Bill Richardson is showing signs of breaking out of this group and being viable in many places (I’m in Iowa, remember, and I saw some yard signs this evening), but at the very least Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel can count on being well underrepresented when the delegates are totaled up.

Seconds count

Another type of candidate who suffers under the reign of Iowa Caucus math terror is a candidate who is viable in most precincts but who is not the second choice of a large number of non-viable candidates’ supporters.

In 2004, Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt were in a nasty spat for the last few weeks of the caucus. Dean did well enough to be viable in most precincts, and Gephardt didn’t. Gephardt’s folks remembered the spat, and their second-choice votes went to John Kerry and John Edwards.

Kucinich voters, who perceived Dean as unfairly getting love from many liberals, also resented Dean. The Kucinich folks, of course, saw Kucinich as the real liberal in the race.

Further, Kucinich and Edwards encouraged their folks to support the other candidate if one was viable in a precinct and one wasn’t. Edwards’ delegate totals swelled on the basis of Kucinich and Gephardt voters re-aligning with him, while Dean fell behind.

Just like the Electoral College, the final delegate counts in Iowa may not reflect the percentage of support of voters for each candidate.

Blocking for delegates

Depending on how many folks show up in any given precinct, there is a range of votes, which will secure a set number of delegates. Say Hillary Clinton does well in a precinct in the initial vote, and is well over the number she needs for four of the eight delegates. But her people calculate she won’t have the votes during re-alignment to secure a fifth delegate.

Further suppose that it’s a precinct where Barack Obama is doing a little better than Richardson, and they’re the only two other viable candidates. Suppose that, under the math, it looks like Obama is going to eke out three delegates to Richardson’s one.

Richardson supporters are bummed because if they only had, maybe, an extra five votes, they could get a second delegate, reducing Obama to two also.

Well, in this scenario, Hillary’s getting four even if she loses some individual votes, so her supporters, if they’re paying attention, can send five voters over to caucus with Richardson. If her people perceive Obama to be more likely to challenge her for first place in the delegate totals around the state than Richardson, that’s a smart play.

Any candidate who can shed a few votes without dropping down a delegate will use the exact same math. For example, Richardson’s campaign may think Obama and Clinton are going to run away with first and second place statewide, but may calculate that he has a shot at edging out Edwards for third.

If Richardson can afford to lose a few extra voters in a precinct without losing a delegate himself, and Edwards is in a tight battle for an extra delegate with any other candidate, it makes sense for the guv to send a few voters to the other candidate to block Edwards from picking up a delegate.

Phew. Is it any wonder Iowans score well in national math rankings?

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.