(NEW YORK) — Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses are on Monday night.
The Republican caucuses will be held at 7 p.m. CST — or 8 p.m. EST — at precinct locations in all 99 counties.
Voters must be registered as a Republican to participate and bring a valid form of ID. They can register to vote or register as a Republican in person at their caucus location that night.
The Democratic caucuses will also be held on Monday, though this time no presidential preference will take place. Instead, Iowa Democrats can request a presidential preference card through the mail or online by Feb. 19. Those results will be released on March 5.
The change comes after Iowa’s Democratic caucuses in 2020 were infamously marred by technical glitches.
State significance
Iowa has been the first voting state in the nation for the presidential nominating contest since 1972, giving the Hawkeye State an outsize influence over public discussion and media coverage of the broader primary race.
A GOP debate was held in Des Moines days before the caucuses. Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner among the Republican candidates, did not attend but rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley did. (Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who are also running, didn’t qualify.)
Iowa has 40 party delegates up for grabs (out of more than 2,000 available nationally), which will be allocated proportionally according to the results of the vote. Candidates technically compete for delegates — who then award the party’s nomination in the summer.
Brutal winter weather this year is a new complication, fueling discussion — and comments from candidates — about how that might affect turnout.
Trump handily won the caucuses in 2020, when he was essentially running unopposed as the incumbent, and went on to win the state in the presidential election by 8%. He narrowly lost the 2016 caucuses to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
The 2020 Democratic caucuses saw now-President Joe Biden finish fifth, sparking questions over how representative the electorate was of Democrats elsewhere.
There are 46 delegates up for grabs for Democrats in Iowa this year, out of more than 4,000 nationwide.
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