8 Counties for Edwards in Iowa...

Many who have been following this race since last summer have gotta feeling about Edwards' dark horse status and his ability to close in Iowa. For those who have not looked closely at how he was doing 4 years ago in the same state...

Click here for CNN Data

2004 Iowa Caucus: Out of 100 counties... Edwards won 37, tied 19 and was competitive in most.... except for 8 counties where he got womped: Blackhawk, Clinton, Dubuque, Johnson, Linn, Pottawattamie, Scott and Woodbury. These will be critical on Thursday.

Iowa 101

The Iowa caucuses do not result directly in national delegates for candidates the way that the primaries do. Instead, caucus-goers elect delegates to county conventions, who elect delegates to district and state conventions where the national convention delegates are selected. The following applies to Dems only.

Jan 3: Iowa caucus-goers gather at local precincts and do the caucus thing, after which the first ballot is cast (a blank sheet of paper). Inviable candidates (those receiving less than 15% of the vote) are weeded out by a second ballot wherein supporters of inviable candidates are required to make a second choice. Precinct delegates are then chosen to the county conventions, allocated in proportion to the percentage of support received by each candidate after the last ballot.

March 26: County conventions convene and choose their delegates to both their respective Congressional District Conventions AND the Iowa State Democratic Convention. Each presidential contender receives a number of the county's delegates to the District/State Convention in proportion to the number of County Convention delegates supporting their candidate.

April 26: Congressional District Conventions convene to choose delegates to the Democratic National Convention. 29 district delegates are allocated in proportion to the number of District Convention delegates supporting a viable candidate. Congressional districts 1-4 in Iowa are given 6 delegates and IA-5 is given 5. Thus, the district convention is the first time that DNC delegates are officially allocated to candidates.

June 14: The IA State Democratic Convention chooses 16 of Iowa's pledged DNC delegates based on statewide support: 10 At-large National Convention delegates and 6 pledged PLEOs. The remaining 12 delegates - 11 PLEOs plus 1 additional delegate - are officially unpledged.

29 district delegates + 16 pledged state delegates + 12 unpledged state delegates = 57

Aug 25-28: DNC Denver!