all right we are on our second loopcast live what's up everyone i'm here joined by my co-host

erika and josh coming off the weekend and we have quite a few new stories to discuss

but none more pressing than our policy wonk josh we got an election season in full swing

here and i'd like to get some predictions.

What are you seeing?

Well, first off, for people maybe on initiative, what is the Iowa caucus?

Why is it significant?

And maybe what are some of your expectations going forward?

Yeah, I mean, people are probably more familiar with the primary.

And a primary is where the polls are open all day from like seven in the

morning to like eight at night or something like that. Anytime you can come in and you can cash

your ballot, you might even have early voting days ahead of time. Caucuses are not like that.

They're organized at a certain time and place. And so it's like 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. or whatever,

and you go to a certain place and people make

the case for their candidate. And they might even have rules suggesting that, okay, this area, you know,

you have to get 15 percent or something like that. So what might happen is your favorite candidate might not

get them high, high enough number. And then you swing your support to somebody else.

And so there's this going back and forth between, you know, all the different camps who are trying to, you know, support their candidate.

And why is this such a big deal? I mean, kind of the reason it's a big deal is that New Hampshire State staked a claim to be

the first primary in the country. And then I was like, hey, we'll just do caucuses. So they do these

caucuses, not a primary. So it's a little bit different. But we're first. Yeah, there you go. And the

way it shakes out is that the Iowa caucuses tend to be dominated with social conservatives, or at least not like completely dominated, but they make of a good sizable chunk. And so you get some surprises. You know, in 1988, Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition, ended up surprising everybody. I think he got like second place or something like that. And it was really

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