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Today - Iowa Caucuses launch voting for US President

Today - Iowa Caucuses launch voting for US President.

Countdown starting today:

Our US GENERAL ELECTION DAY will be on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. We will elect our US President as well as all 435 members of our US House and 1/3 (this year it is 33 on rotation and may increase with retirements) of our US Senate.

In WI, we will elect ALL 99 members of our State Assembly and at least half of the 33 members our State Senators. This year that is 16. We elected 17 in November 2010. Retirements may increase the number of Senate seats up for election.

There are RECALL elections anticipated in 2012... those dates will depend on the filing of successful RECALL PETITIONS and then the setting of the RECALL ELECTION DATES. Time will tell...

If you are interested to follow the PUBLIC OPINION POLLS related to the elections, there is the "PollingReport.com" website which compiles various polls.

Right now, they have posted the most recent (Dec. 27-30, 2011) Des Moines Register Iowa Poll for the Republican Presidential Preference with comparison to the Nov. 27-30, 2011 poll. Very significant shift in the poll among the Republican candidates.

Surfing the website, I was amazed at the wide-range of polls. Take a look!

With the Iowa Caucuses today, it is valuable to understand how they work. The REPUBLICANS and the DEMOCRATS follow VERY different processes in the caucuses. I recommend the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial posted yesterday which has a VERY helpful chart of the Iowa caucus process, “Caucus critics miss point; retail politics really matter.”

The editorial makes a strong case for “retail politics” clarifying disagreement with the general argument that caucuses are unreliable predictor of the presidential race (especially on the Republican side). Too few people participate. Iowa is not representative of the nation.

The editorial asserts, “Today's Iowa caucuses and the coming contests in other small states provide a necessary and welcome close look at the candidates.”

Interesting perspective shared by the editorial from Democratic strategist Carter Eskew who wrote on The Washington Post's website the other day that the caucuses have three main functions: to winnow the field, to wake up complacent front-runners (recall the message sent to former President George H.W. Bush in 1988); and to serve as a catapult for candidacies (think Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008).

The JSOnline editorial asserts, “The extensive retail politicking required to prevail both in Iowa and New Hampshire counts for something in an era of glossy television ads and hands-free campaigns in which candidates seem to want as little actual contact with voters as possible.”

And then says, “We'll go with what Craig Robinson wrote back in May on the website Iowarepublican.com: "’The proper role is not picking the candidate who will win, but instead, vetting the candidates, whittling the pack, and picking the candidate who has done the most to win the voters with his or her ideas.’"

The final conclusion of the editorial, “That's what happens in Iowa every four years - much to the chagrin of other states and the usual coastal observers who wish it weren't so.”

What do YOU wish?

Here we go...

Mr. E.

John Eyster lives in the Edgerton area. He is an adjunct professor of political science at UW-Waukesha and an advocate for democracy/civics education in Wisconsin high schools. John is a community blogger and is not a part of The Gazette staff. His opinion is not necessarily that of the The Gazette staff or management.