In West Des Moines, the Caucuses Get Under Way

People began filing into Jordan Creek Elementary School, Precinct 316, at about 6 p.m., and traffic really started to pick up 30 minutes later until the caucus began at 7 o'clock.

Temporary chair Steve Sheffler, the leader of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, expected about 375 caucus-goers, based on 2008 numbers.

Rick Perry's campaign had a surrogate at the site and about a dozen “Perry for President” yard signs greeted attendees. Some were taped along the gymnasium wall.

Among the out-of-town guests here is Peter Gifford, a student at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, who is part of a class that will be conducting an exit poll as part of a project to determine whether Iowans vote their principles or for the candidate they think is most electable.

Christy Kloberdanz and her fiance, Robert Dopf, showed to caucus for Ron Paul. She met the Texas Congressman in 2008 and encouraged Dopf to look at his candidacy after he began studying Austrian monetary policies, which Paul has praised on the stump. Both said they would have avoided the caucus if Paul wasn't in the campaign.

"To purposely caucus for someone, to make the commitment to get involved, I don't know that I would if he weren't in the race," Kloberdanz said.

"He's the first candidate I've gotten excited about," Kopf said. "I've always wanted to know what it would feel like to find a candidate I identified with in the broadest philosophical sense."

This is one of the largest precincts in West Des Moines. Republicans are caucusing at 21 locations across the city, 17 of them in Polk County and the remainder in Dallas County.

The floor of this caucus is a microcosm of what the Republican National Convention floor will look like in August. Flags are ubiquitous – on lapels, stuck in the bands of hats, on the ends of the pens the delegates will use to mark their secret ballots.

In some precincts, results will be known in a matter of 30 minutes or so. At larger caucuses like this one, it could take a couple of hours. At all  depends on how many candidate representatives speak, how long they drag on and how many votes need to be counted.

The crowd will thin out some after the initial straw poll is taken. That’s when the truly committed – the party regulars, the activists with specific issues they’d like to advance – get down to the business of hammering out the party platform.

They’ll also elect delegates, alternates and junior delegates to the county convention, the first leg of the journey to the national convention Aug. 27-30 in Tampa, FL.

The GOP record for caucus-goers is 118,411, set in 2008, when Mike Huckabee won, followed by Mitt Romney, Fred D. Thompson, John McCain, Paul and Rudy Giuliani.

Patch will provide live coverage of the results as they come in.