So, maybe you can't poll Iowa…

…but you can still guess analyze possible outcomes. Here's my own caucus-eve hunch, based on absorbing an irrational amount of information, via the mailing lists of 6 campaigns, the feeds or front pages of about 100 blogs and the feeds of three wire services and four daily papers.

Not much TV coverage in the mix at all. Just a pinch of talk radio. Lots of barroom conversation.

I think John Edwards will win. Surprise, huh? As a veteran of a couple three decades of caucuses myself, every sign I've seen indicates that the Edwards campaign understands the caucus process and how to build a successful caucus operation. While others might boast of larger ranks of hired hands on the streets, the Edwards campaign has emphasizes having volunteer operatives inside the room. While Obama and Clinton both seem to be counting on waves of new attendees and non-Democrats, many Edwards supporters are repeaters, with insight into the rules, the math and the real world of caucus wheeling and dealing. I've sat through a lot of caucus trainings, and I've sat through a lot of caucuses. I learned a lot more at the caucuses.

It's because of that local, experienced base that Edwards has held his ground in Iowa even as others beat him to the airwaves, outspent him on the air and on the ground and the press tried to turn this into a two-way contest. It's because of that local, experienced base, and his tireless work in rural western Iowa and the breadth of his labor support that I expect 34% of the precinct delegates selected to be Edwards supporters.


The Clinton effort has suffered, I think, from something that became apparent as I watched their '92 efforts from the standpoint of the state caucus coordinator for a competing campaign. They don't like caucuses much, and they don't win them, either. They don't think they have to. They're probably right. But they can't lose. They need to come in second so that they can move to the primary states with the race defined as Hillary v. _______ , and they don't much care who _______ is. Nobody benefits more from a narrowed field than Clinton. They have the resources and savvy for a first class GOTV operation, and enough support to score second place with 28% of the delegates.

Obama seems to have great appeal to people previously outside the Democratic Party, and the rules allow them to declare themselves Democrats as they sign in to participate in the caucus (it's the same here in the upper left). Turning out independents and Republican crossovers can challenging, though, and the caucus environment can be intimidating enough for any first timer, let alone one who may not be completely comfortable assuming an unaccustomed partisan role. Some eleventh hour bashing of labor and trial lawyers, two Democratic constituencies that are likely to be overrepresented in caucus rooms, won't make those rooms any more hospitable to first time non-Democrats in attendance. When the deals are cut, despite Kucinich's promise to deliver his <1%, I think Obama will be mostly dealt out.

There's also the fact that much Obama's hope seems vested in student support, but that's blunted by their tendency to be geographically concentrated. Two hundred students crammed into a dormitory commons may end up picking the same number of delegates as a couple dozen folks in the hinterlands. It's the kind of thing that makes polling the caucuses so problematic (read "impossible"). Despite all the hype and Oprah, there are too many barriers to victory for the Obama campaign to overcome. Third place, 25%.

The remaining 13% will be split, probably more or less evenly, between Biden, Dodd, Kucinich and Richardson. Regardless of their individual shares, their net outcome will be identical - no national delegates. Since, like Washington, Iowa has a multi-tiered process of delegate selection, there will be more meetings, with more threshold requirements, before any national delegates are actually selected, and even if the campaigns survive (unlikely, really) to that point, their thresholds won't.

On the Republican side, well, since I can't imagine how any sentient being could vote for any of those guys, I have no idea.

Expect John McCain to do better than you expect him to, though.