By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

1. So what is a presidential precinct caucus, anyway?

A caucus is essentially a meeting of local political party activists who convene to express their candidate preferences. As is the case in most caucus states, Iowa’s precinct meetings start a multi-tiered process that will culminate at the state party conventions with the final selection and allocation of the state’s delegates to the national Democratic and Republican Party conventions.

2. How does a caucus differ from a primary election?

Unlike a caucus, a primary is carried out in a virtually identical manner to a general election contest, with participants going to polling place or, depending on state election procedures, voting at home for their preferred candidates. A primary election attracts a broader swath of the electorate, in part because it requires a shorter time commitment. A caucus takes longer to conduct and tends to attract dedicated party activists.

3. It seems as though the Iowa caucuses are always the first event of the presidential nomination season. Why is that?

The Iowa precinct caucuses have been the kickoff presidential nominating event since 1972, when the Democratic Party scheduled them for Jan. 24. Since 1976, Democrats and Republicans have held their caucuses on the same date. Until that era, Iowa’s caucuses had been extremely low-profile and weren’t the media circus they are today. But the 1972 and 1976 Democratic contests helped turn the precinct caucuses into a major force in presidential selection: the stronger-than-expected performance by South Dakota Sen. George McGovern in the first of those events and by former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter in the latter helped boost both to the party’s nomination, which in turn turned future Iowa precinct events into media magnets. Iowa officials since have zealously guarded their state’s tradition as the host of the kickoff nomination contest.

4. Where are these caucuses held?

In a wide variety of locations such as schools, churches, community centers, public libraries and even private homes. Democrats and Republicans will hold caucuses in each of Iowa’s nearly 1,800 precincts; in some places, both party’s caucuses will be held in the same locations. For a list of precinct caucus locations, click here for the Democrats and here for the Republicans.

5. How many people show up to caucus?

It depends on a contest’s competitiveness, but usually about 10 to 20 percent of a party’s voters will participate in the caucuses. About 124,000 people participated in the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses (there were no Republican contests that year because President Bush was unopposed for renomination).

6. Who can participate in a precinct caucus?

Any Iowa resident can participate, provided he or she is 18 years of age or will be by Nov. 4, 2008, the date of the general election. To participate in a party’s caucus, a voter must have previously registered as a member of that party or chooses to register with the party on caucus night. Any prospective participant must show up at the caucus site by 7 p.m. central time, when the caucus begins.

7. Isn’t Jan. 3 awfully early to hold precinct caucuses?

Yes, it’s by far the earliest date for the Iowa caucuses — so early in fact, that it occurs just two days after New Year’s Day, and it will cause a conflict for football fans who want to watch the Orange Bowl college football game between Virginia Tech and Kansas. This is a result of the accelerated “front-loading” of the presidential nominating schedule: the 2008 Iowa caucuses originally were penciled in for Monday, Jan. 14, but shifted earlier because other states moved up their nominating events and impinged on Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status. Previously, the Iowa caucuses had been held no earlier than Jan. 19, the date on which they were held in both 1976 and in 2004.

8. So what exactly will happen on the evening of Jan. 3?

Republican and Democrats voters will gather that evening at their respective precinct caucus locations, ostensibly to elect delegates to the county conventions in March and to conduct other party business.

The caucus process is fairly simple for the Republicans, who will cast a nonbinding straw vote for their preferred candidate before moving on to other party business.

The Democratic process is more complex. Caucus attendees will divide up into candidate preference groups. Generally speaking, a preference group needs to have 15 percent of caucus attendees to be considered “viable” — meaning that the group is eligible to elect delegates to a county convention. So a candidate at a precinct caucus that has 100 attendees would need the support of 15 people to form a viable candidate preference group.

After caucus attendees divide up into preference groups, those who are in non-viable groups or are not committed to any candidate are allowed time to realign with other candidates’ groups. After this period of realignment, county convention delegates are allocated among the candidate preference groups, and the results are then phoned in to the state Democratic Party.

9. What can you tell me about the results that are reported?

You’ll see a raw vote total for the Republicans. In the 2000 Republican caucus, for example, George W. Bush received about 36,000 of the approximately 89,000 votes that were cast in the straw poll, or 41 percent of the total. Bush out-polled publisher Steve Forbes (30 percent), former ambassador Alan Keyes (14 percent), and conservative political activist Gary Bauer (9 percent). Arizona Sen. John McCain , who bid for the 2000 nomination but did not campaign in the Iowa caucuses that year, received 5 percent.

The Democrats report the caucus results in terms of each candidate’s projected delegate strength at the state convention in June — using a calculation known as State Delegate Equivalents (SDE). There’s a reason for this. The Jan. 3 precinct caucuses will elect delegates to county conventions that are of different sizes; the county convention in Carroll County, for example, will include 155 delegates who will be elected Jan. 3, while the county convention for Tama County will include 85 delegates who will be elected Jan. 3.

The state party weights each county’s delegate allotment to the June state convention based on its raw Democratic vote in the 2004 presidential and 2006 governor’s contests, compared to the statewide Democratic vote. Carroll and Tama will have differently sized county conventions, but they actually have the same delegate allotment (16) at the state convention — which is fixed at 2,500 delegates — because both counties each gave the same cumulative total of votes in 2004 to Democrat John Kerry and in 2006 to Democrat Chet Culver . That complicated scenario explains why the party releases the results as SDEs.

In the 2004 Democratic caucuses, Kerry’s reported total of 37.6 percent reflected his anticipated delegate strength at the state Democratic convention. It did not mean that Kerry was supported by 37.6 percent of all Democratic caucus attendees.

10. If the purpose of the Iowa caucuses is to elect delegates to the county convention, then why do the results of the Iowa precinct caucuses receive so much national attention?

Because the media widely interpret the precinct caucuses as an important early test of each candidate’s viability and his or her campaign organization, even though no national convention delegates are selected at the event. The caucuses have such become a media magnet that the intense focus on who won and who lost — or, more accurately, who exceeded expectations and who did not meet them — can help make or break candidates, well before the overwhelming majority of primary and caucus voters elsewhere in the nation have had an opportunity to vote or even weigh about their choices.

11. How often does the winner of the Iowa precinct caucuses go on to win the nomination?

Most but not all of the time. In 2004, Kerry hurdled to Democratic front-runner status after a late surge in Iowa propelled him to victory. Eight days later, Kerry won the New Hampshire primary, and he effectively clinched the Democratic nomination after sweeping the primaries a few weeks later.

In 2000, Bush, then the governor of Texas, won the Republican Iowa caucuses and Vice President Al Gore easily won those on the Democratic side. Bush lost to McCain eight days later in New Hampshire, where Gore won narrowly. But both Bush and Gore recovered from those subpar showings to easily clinch their parties’ nominations.

In 1988, Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole and Missouri Democratic Rep. Richard A. Gephardt won the Iowa caucuses, but neither won their party’s nomination. Dole lost out to George H.W. Bush, the current president’s father, while the Democratic nomination went to Michael S. Dukakis.

12. Can a presidential candidate fare poorly in Iowa and still recover and win the nomination?

Historical caucus results have spawned a conventional wisdom that there are “three tickets out of Iowa.” In every contested Iowa caucus since 1972, only once has a presidential candidate finished worse than third and gone on to become his party’s presidential candidates. And that time — the 1992 Democratic caucuses, when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton finished fourth — was an aberration: Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin was on the ballot and his opponents did not actively challenge his “favorite son” status in his home state.

Third-place Iowa finishers who went on to win their party’s nomination include Bush in 1988, when he lost to Dole and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in Iowa but went on the win the nomination and defeat Dukakis in the general election.

Dukakis also finished third in the Iowa caucuses. But in this case, his showing was portrayed as a success. First-place finisher Gephardt and Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, the runner-up, represented states that abut Iowa, and faced much higher expectations for success than a candidate from Massachusetts.