Who will win the Iowa caucuses tonight?

Probably Clinton and Cruz. Cru has the political organization for this kind of thing; Trump’s support is ephemeral and based in the kind of fed up people who don’t do more than grumble.

Hillary only because she will edge out Bernie through organization.

The one group that probably won’t win: The American people.

In races where the polling is too close to call, I predict against my preferences. That way I will be only too glad to be proved wrong, so I am going with Trump and Clinton. Winning here for either of them could very well make them unstoppable.

I am certainly no fan of Cruz, but if he won here it would keep the race open and allow the other GOP candidates to bruise the eventual nominee.

Completely immaterial to me. It just doesn’t matter to me what a small, self-selected group of corn farmers in Iowa does in their living rooms. This is all a big charade.

First, the outcome is beyond my control. I don’t live in Iowa and have no say in the outcome, so I’m not going to expend an ounce of thought about what decision they make.

Second, whatever happens, it’s meaningless. Think of the Iowa caucuses 4, 8, and even 12 years ago, and compare the ‘winner’ in each of those to the eventual nominee.. Again, this is shadow boxing at best, and a complete waste of time, at worse. There are 49 more states that will be doing caucuses and/or primaries, and people are paying far too much attention to Iowa – much more than it deserves.

These caucuses may sell newspapers and keep TV broadcasters employed (to say nothing of all the hotels in Iowa that are doing very well this week), but this is political theater, with no meaning at all.

Clinton and Trump.

I’m thinking Cruz. I live about 40 miles from the Iowa border here in Illinois and our news stations come out of the Quad Cities (Iowa). He has an overwhelming amount of support from what I’ve seen and heard from acquaintances.

Clinton

Cruz.

Iowan’s caucus face-to-face and I believe a large percentage of Trump supporters are:
a.) simply protesting the status quo, not supporting a candidate and
b.) too embarrassed to support such an obvious nut in front of their peers, at least through more than one round of voting.

In any case, tomorrow Trump can come out soundly against ethanol, that trick state having been pimped pandered reconsidered.

Agree with @kritiper—Clinton and Trump the winners and we the losers.

I have no idea. I’m so curious to see what happens. If you make me choose, I’ll say Sanders and Fiorina.

@ibstubro I thought only the democrats caucus face to face. The republicans are secret ballot.

On the Democrat side Sanders will win and CNN will report that Clinton won.

Regardless of who wins the Democratic side, the media will say Clinton won.

@Darth_Algar And if Clinton and Trump win both Sanders and Cruz will blame their loss on a glitch with the Windows software.

Do the Iowa caucuses even use ballots? I thought they more or less did a head count.

@Darth_Algar The way I understand it is everyone is in a gathering area…think gymnasium…and each candidate and a spot for undecideds has a station or demarcated area where the assembled voters physically stand in. Once everyone is where they prefer to be a tally is taken. In order to proceed, a candidate including the undecideds have to have 15% of the total vote to move forward. Anyone standing with a candidate or undecided that does not have 15% now has to choose a new candidate/spot to move to and a new tally is taken. This continues until all remaining have at least 15% of the tally and then a head count is taken and the candidate with the most tallies wins the Caucus.

I have heard that the Dems and Repubs operate theirs differently but I have not taken the time to realize the nuances that may be different.

The number of new voters showing up tonight appears to exceed expectations which will bode well for both Sanders and Trump.

The good news is, I was wrong that scary Trump would win.

The bad news is, he lost to even scarier Cruz.

The good news is, Cruz now joins those stellar performers Mike Huckabee (‘08) and Rick Santorum (‘12) in winning the all important, king-making Iowa caucus.

The “Kardashian Primary”. Famous for being famous in the absence of gravitas.

Maybe the best news of all, @ibstubro, we’re hopefully near done having to hear over and over about Iowa.

Of course the bad news is, now we’re got to start hearing over and over about New Hampshire. * sigh *

Iowa may not actually be over yet. I’ve seen enough stuff like this and this floating around that I think Iowa will still be in the public eye until at least 2018. Why do I say that? Remember Bush v Gore? How long did Florida hold the nation’s attention after that? I seem to recall it being considerably longer than it took for the re-counts and SCOTUS ruling.

Since people have been bitching about Bush v Gore long after Bush left the Oval Office, I suppose Hillary winning by coin-toss will create enough controversy that we likely won’t hear the last of it for quite a while.

Another thing worth noting; Hillary is declaring outright victory while Sanders is calling it a tie. That should tell you what type of person each one is.

@Pachy Some of us are used to hearing over and over about NH even when there isn’t an election cycle going on. And between the headlines I’ve read and the news from friends/family, I’m glad I moved. It seems that they veered hard to the right since I left.

You forget, @jerv, the only value the Iowa Caucus has is providing something for the news media to report on. Nobody actually gives a shit about Iowa…that’s why they’ve legislated that they have to have the first of the primary contests.

On to New Hampshire.

At least we have a loser.

@ibstubro I rarely give a shit about Iowa, period.

Until now, many people have said Sanders can’t win, doesn’t have the support, etcetera. Iowa was close enough that Hillary literally won it by coin-toss. The young voters came out, and for every youngster that voted Clinton, five voted Sanders. Next on the schedule is a state where Sanders has a strong home-court advantage.

Iowa and NH may make many of the people who want Bernie but were planning to vote Hillary simply because they thought he was not a viable candidate will rethink things, which could make the rest of the primary season interesting. Maybe the DNC’s “Chosen One” will scrape by, maybe it’ll be an upset again, but either way it’ll be memorable.