How The Iowa Democratic Caucus Works - Featuring Legos

The Iowa caucus isn't like a regular primary. Here's how it works.

Originally created Taylor Dobbs & Angela Evancie before VPR became Vermont Public.

Copyright 2016 Vermont Public (formerly VPR). Something Small (Instrumental) by Minden is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

[estuffes]

This is the only way I would have learned about this process. Thanks. I vote for you Yoda.

[TheNumber]

Naturally, Yoda and Sidious support opposing candidates.

[MaartenvanRossemLezingen]

You could have made B win instead of C for this example.

[josephksnider]

Thank you for making and sharing this, very informative.

[BRBallin]

I wish they had a super-secure website where you can register and vote

[ushtemanushteunchaga]

1:47...I think I saw Bernie Sanders in there!

[Burgerfanny]

This system seems like it would have a lot of fights breaking out. Does that ever happen?

[ThePromisedWLAN]

They might as well rename it 'cockus' because this system seems like we as Americans are getting _f**ked_.

[jennamarcus]

Can someone explain the whole delegates thing?

[RedRose]

Hi, an Australian here. What is the significance of a caucus to the election. Is it just so people can get an idea of who might win when it is time to vote? Also is the caucus only in Iowa? If it is in other states too, how come the Iowa caucus has had so much buzz on the news?

[OscarHernandez-bvpr]

so as long as you get over 15%...you get the same number of delegates or the proportioned amount?

[daxdigitalus]

This doesn't help me. I need to know how to win 6 coin tosses in a row.

[appl]

This is really weird, So what is stopping trolls from registering as Republicans or Democrats just to mess with their electoral process?

[floridapalafox]

Mr. SANDERS ....YOU WILL BE OUR NEXT, PRESIDENT ☺☺😀😀😀😀😀😀😀 😁 😀 😃

[caent]

This is not true. There is also a way that Candidate B who wasn't viable in the first vote count can become viable by doing a few things. Like if they threaten Candidate A if they don't send some of their voters to them to become viable, they will throw their entire support to Candidate C. This is like higher level Poli Sci. Also Candidate A or C might throw some support to the unviable candidate in order to take away a delegate from their opposing candidate so that when the democratic convention comes up their candidate might have a small edge over the other candidate. Example, Bernie 6 delegates Clinton 5 delegates OMalley 0 delegates in above scenario since Iowa is a proportional rather than winner take all state. In my example, Clinton throws some of her supporters in Omalley's camp if they can spare it so that O Malley becomes viable. Clinton 5 Bernie 5 OMalley 1.
It would also help if that OMalley delegate if by the democratic convention and O Malley is out, will throw their vote then to Clinton at the convention floor.

[elikoziel]

Now show the democrats caucus, where they flip a clin, err coin...

[TheRealDavil]

So in other words, small groups of people who no one really knows who they are get together and decide things for their state... That's not democratic, not even a little. I mean you could try and argue that they're kind of elected, but that would be a republic huh? I guess that's why you all chose to use so many star wars characters, you know the old republic or something... Then again you also used characters from the hobbit and it's not like a small group of people deciding the fate of the entire world was a bad idea. I mean it worked out in the end, although yea if everyone just came together and rushed Mordor it probably would have ended quicker and lot's of people wouldn't have died and Wizards corrupted and such, but it worked out. I mean basically everyone involved died so that's a plus yea? Seriously though both parties suck and we need term limits for congress and a modernized system. The days of people not knowing how to read and not being able to make their own decisions is long past. At this point we don't need a two party system, we need a no party system where votes are taken directly from the people not a group of sheltered fools only hungry for power and looking out for their own well being.