Talk:2008 Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses

Up to the minute revision
Wikipedia is not a news site; it's an encyclopedia. Don't both with the results until the final ones are given.--Bedford (talk) 02:15, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok its settled then, nobody edit anything until November 5th--mitrebox (talk) 05:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

March 15th County Conventions & Popular Vote Count on CNN
There's the county convention on March 15th, which I'll be attending as a bystander. Something could be mentioned about this.

Also, there appear to be vote totals at CNN.com for Iowa. This isn't the first time that the media have got it wrong, only to be corrected later. Just looking at the Linn County results at CNN, it definitely looks like a vote total. I'm pretty sure that these are the sign in sheet totals: when people attended the caucus on Jan 4th, everyone was required to sign in with their name, address, and mark who they supported.

It makes sense. The delegate totals were called in (there were 10 delegates at my precinct, 360+ people). The sign in sheets would take quite a while to count.

I'd be willing do sum the data from CNN in a spreadsheet and/or find the results somewhere else so that we could have a popular vote total.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=IA

C. Nelson (talk) 04:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a good thing you found these numbers from CNN, because that would really be helpful. Maybe this should go as a subsection under "Results." I'll see if I can get some more information to work with ASAP.--Dem393 (talk) 03:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Potential National delegates
How are the delegates alloted calculated? If it is a percentage from the 57 total delegates Obama should have 22 delegates, not 16; and 17 for Clinton and Edwards. Is it not 57 delegates? Is there a different way to calculate, CNN says we should scrap the ones with less than 15%, done that... changes nothing. Also, if my calculations are righ(they are rounded, since I can't think of a way to send 0.45 of a delegate) what happens to the 1 delegate that is not alloted to anybody because of the rounding. I think this is a important thing to elucidate in this and other related articlesChico (talk) 05:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * There are 45 pledged delegates for Iowa and 12 unpledged delegates. These are further broken down such that each Congressional District is allocated a certain number of delegates, as well as the state at-large.  I find that  explains it quite well, although I disagree with that pages' calculations; I went through and calculated the results (based on the provided county data) myself and found data in agreement with the CNN figures. --Goobergunch|? 09:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the article should directly state the reason for Clinton getting one more national delegate than Edwards dispite coming in third behind her in state delegates. "Due to the system of allocating delegates from the county to state conventions" is extremely vague. Jon (talk) 20:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I added a bit of explanation there, although I'm not sure there's a good way to cite it. --Goobergunch|? 08:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

placement of the results
the results should be placed at the top so that the reader doesn't have to scroll down to find them. Kingturtle (talk) 10:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

the first person of African descent?
I'm not much of a Wikipedia editor, so I thought I'd bring my issue up here rather than make a change immediately. The first paragraph states:

Of the eight major Democratic Presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois received the most support from Iowa Democratic caucus-attendees, making him the first person of African descent of any party to carry the caucus.

I understand it can be a touchy issue, but black American or African American would work better than person of African descent. It's generally accepted (especially by evolutionary biologists) that all humans are of African descent. The Wikipedia entry for Barack Obama describes him as African American, so I think that should be used here as well. --Sdcrym (talk) 21:17, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think what happened is it was originally "African American", but then someone cut "American" to change it to just "African" because he's so immedately of African descent. (This would probably be hard to explain, but 1st and 2nd generation immigrates from Africa generally aren't regarded as "African American" in the South at least. In fact while I was visting my parents sunday school class during the holidays outside Atlanta it was mentioned that the church (predominately White) has more "African" members than "African American" members. ) Jon (talk) 19:06, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

GA Review
This article is about a subject which is (technically) currently on-going and thus meets one of the Quick Fail Criteria. Please re-nominate when the event in question is concluded. -- jackturner3 (talk) 14:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I disagree with this decision. The Iowa caucuses have concluded, and the media is no longer focusing on this event. It is unlikely that the caucuses are going to have any further effects on the Democratic presidential nominating process.--Dem393 (talk) 00:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * In addition to the review by the previous editor, I too respectfully fail the article but on different grounds. Firstly, the prose is wordy at times.  There are also too many transitional words.  Secondly, there were two gaps in referencing.  I believe it needs to be verified that Obama was the first African American to win the caucus.  See http://www.vibe.com/news/news_headlines/2008/01/barack_obama_wins_iowa/.  The line: "Most caucus goers also said that Obama was strong in both of these areas, which is an indication of his appeal in Iowa." is more opinion than fact, and needs to be sourced or removed.  Thirdly, and most critically, is the large amount of information that has been left out of the article.  There is little mention of the actual campaign, the candidates, debates, positions, amount of money spent on advertising, types of ads, detail in candidate messaging, what it meant to the candidates, etc.  Some of what was mentioned about the economy in the economic impact section doesn't really belong there but in some sort of issues section perhaps.  Fourthly, there probably should be a whole section on the after, not just a few sentences.  And finally, the lead to the article lacks excitement or a summary of some of more interesting parts of the article.  Please see Good Article Criteria section one.  Thank you all for your efforts one this page.  I look forward to seeing it elevated to good article status once these changes are made.User:calbear22 (talk) 09:23, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I will see to it that I get this done ASAP.--Dem393 (talk) 02:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

County Convention Results
It would seem Obama has taken some of Edwards delegates. I've expressed this by bracketing the old delegate counts and adding a note below the table. Andareed (talk) 00:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By the Green Pages Clinton drops a delegate :-) ... they are very funny. --Subver (talk) 00:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * They must know something everyone else doesn't. *shifty eyes* Andareed (talk) 00:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops...maybe they were right? :-) --Subver (talk) 10:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Missing state delegate
What happened to the 2,501st state delegate? The total for the first contest is 2,501 but for the second one it is 2,500. – Zntrip 04:07, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Precient delegates aren't County delegates. Jon (talk) 17:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

District Results Total's don't add up
The District Results Total percent (by adding Obama + Clinton + Edwards) doesn't come close to 100%. Either there's a line missing (uncommited?) or else some of the results aren't in yet. Jon (talk) 18:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed - they were meant to be just percents of the delegates. Andareed (talk) 20:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

== Removed Economic Impact Section
Irrelevant and dated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.199.158.54 (talk) 17:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)