How many counties will Hillary Clinton win in the 2016 Iowa Caucuses?

[Beet]

90-97. I could see Sanders snagging a few. It's a caucus after all.

I can't wait for the Clinton campaign to resort to attacking caucuses again.

Caucuses are sort of like poll taxes, literacy requirements, and voter ID laws. Their main function is to drastically decrease the electorate by erecting a high barrier (e.g., being able to stand around for several more hours than usual) to voting. They're also unusually susceptible to fraud, manipulation, and arbitrary cutoffs. Regardless the of whether Clinton or whomever your candidate is, is winning them, it's hard to see why anyone who supports democracy could like them.

[Beet]

90-97. I could see Sanders snagging a few. It's a caucus after all.

I can't wait for the Clinton campaign to resort to attacking caucuses again.

Caucuses are sort of like poll taxes, literacy requirements, and voter ID laws. Their main function is to drastically decrease the electorate by erecting a high barrier (e.g., being able to stand around for several more hours than usual) to voting. They're also unusually susceptible to fraud, manipulation, and arbitrary cutoffs. Regardless the of whether Clinton or whomever your candidate is, is winning them, it's hard to see why anyone who supports democracy could like them.

Except that turnout doesn't matter so much for partisan primaries (certainly not counting California's primaries there), and lower turnout means higher information voters.

Of course it matters. Higher turnout means a broader cross section of the population is represented.

[Beet]

90-97. I could see Sanders snagging a few. It's a caucus after all.

I can't wait for the Clinton campaign to resort to attacking caucuses again.

Caucuses are sort of like poll taxes, literacy requirements, and voter ID laws. Their main function is to drastically decrease the electorate by erecting a high barrier (e.g., being able to stand around for several more hours than usual) to voting. They're also unusually susceptible to fraud, manipulation, and arbitrary cutoffs. Regardless the of whether Clinton or whomever your candidate is, is winning them, it's hard to see why anyone who supports democracy could like them.

Except that turnout doesn't matter so much for partisan primaries (certainly not counting California's primaries there), and lower turnout means higher information voters.

Of course it matters. Higher turnout means a broader cross section of the population is represented.

We don't need voters who just vote for Clinton because of name recognition.

Recognizing someone's name and actually going to the polls to vote for that person are two different things.

[Beet]

90-97. I could see Sanders snagging a few. It's a caucus after all.

I can't wait for the Clinton campaign to resort to attacking caucuses again.

Caucuses are sort of like poll taxes, literacy requirements, and voter ID laws. Their main function is to drastically decrease the electorate by erecting a high barrier (e.g., being able to stand around for several more hours than usual) to voting. They're also unusually susceptible to fraud, manipulation, and arbitrary cutoffs. Regardless the of whether Clinton or whomever your candidate is, is winning them, it's hard to see why anyone who supports democracy could like them.

Except that turnout doesn't matter so much for partisan primaries (certainly not counting California's primaries there), and lower turnout means higher information voters.

Of course it matters. Higher turnout means a broader cross section of the population is represented.

We don't need voters who just vote for Clinton because of name recognition.

Recognizing someone's name and actually going to the polls to vote for that person are two different things.

There's absolutely no reason for the internals of a political party to be "democratic". A political party is there to nominate candidates for people to vote on. Insomuch as anyone has a fair chance to participate in the process, I don't see the problem.

Then why have caucuses and primaries at all? Why not just coronate Hillary in a smoke-filled room? I'd be alright with that if she runs.

Of course, some people might say that anyone doesn't have a fair chance to participate in the process, thanks to our first-past-the-post electoral system. They'd argue that the system is set up in such a way as to create a bias towards a two-party system, since third party candidates tend to act as spoilers. The result is that we usually end up with only two people with a realistic chance at winning, and those two people tend to be from the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. Insomuch as a choice between two people cannot reflect the diversity of opinion in the U.S., those people would argue that it's important for them to have a say in determining who those people are to begin with, such that ideas that otherwise would not have a chance, have a chance at being represented.