This is my FIRST diary here... but what a nice evening to cause it.
OK, I promised I would write of my experience tonight. I was pleased to co-chair my caucus at Ames High School, AM 2-1 and after we finished the caucus paperwork, I enjoyed a couple of adult beverages. Well deserved, if I say so myself. We started out with the building not being available until after 5:20, which screwed up some of the planned layout and setup. Folks began to arrive around 5:30, and the flow steadily increased until the line cleared around 7, when registration ended.
In 2004, we had 385 in precinct Ames 2-1. WOW... here we had 550 tonight. Our neighboring precinct Ames 2-4 had aroudn 410 in '04 and tonight had 631, which is comparable. So, the folks were piled up. But they were incredibly pleasant of spirit. At the initial alignment, the 550 attendance meant that we needed 83 people to be viable. at first cut, only the Obama, Clinton, and Edwards camp were viable.. in that order. Next was Richardson at 60, Biden at 46, Uncommitted at 40 and the others below that. So realignment 1 occurred and we had the original 3 viable, with Richardson picking up to 88 to gain viability, and also Biden (my initial choice), Kucinich, Dodd, Uncommitted and Gravel being knocked out.
The final realignment found these results: Obama with 179, Clinton with 147, Edwards 127,and Richardson with 97. By caucus math, you divide the preference group number by 550 and multiply by 17 (the number of delegates allocated to our precinct). From that you get a delegate apprortionment of: O - 5.53; C - 4.54; E - 3.92; R - 3.00. Remember we allocate 17 delegates, and the whole number above adds to 15 (5+4+3+3), so 2 more remain. Those go to the largest fraction remainder, so Edwards (at .92) and Clinton (at .54) get the two. Note that Obama had a fraction of .53! That meant that if one more person had gone to Obama, or conversely one less had gone to Clinton, a delegate would have switched. But as it was the apportioning was: O-5, C-5, E-4, and R-3.
The neatest thing to me was that a reporter was there who asked me as chair my take on the process and why the turnout was so up from '04, and I said that the additional 4 years of an administration perceived so irresponsible coupled with such an outstanding field of Democratic candidates--all reasonable with passionate support (except Gravel, but that is ok too...--were a sure thing for enhanced turnout. I added that if you looked at the Obama vs. Clinton apportionment, that truly one person made the difference there. I will comment later below about my favorite moment of the night (thank you to the female Obama supporter there who demonstrated one of the coolest things that the caucus does) later in the comments below. What a great night!