Net Results

CQ Politics senior reporter Greg Giroux reminds that the two parties report the Iowa caucus results quite differently.

Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. The Republican process is straightforward; caucus-goers will cast secret ballots in a straw poll, so the vote percentages that are reported reflect each candidate's total vote as a share of the countywide vote. They then will proceed with the nitty-gritty business of selecting delegates to the GOP county conventions that will be the next (and widely ignored) step in Iowa's multi-tiered process.

Leave it to the Democrats to come up with a much more complex system. Their caucus results will be released in terms of State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs), which project each candidate's delegate strength at the June 2008 state convention. The Democratic caucus-goers will not directly cast ballots for presidential candidates; rather, they will divide up into candidate preference groups that generally require 15 percent of caucus attendees of to elect delegates to county conventions in March. The SDEs are based on the number of county convention delegates the candidates earn in tonight's precinct caucuses.

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