What is a caucus, a primary?

When it comes to politics, college students seem to fall into two groups: the very interested, which usually includes those who swear their allegiance to College Republicans or College Democrats, or those who don't know what the hell the government does and don't really care. Pass the beer funnel.

With the Iowa caucus, however, it seems that this generation of 18- to 25-year-olds might actually have a higher interest in the way the U.S. is being run than previous generations. College students showed up in hoards and, as a result, made a significant difference in the results in Iowa. With the South Carolina primary coming up shortly, college students within the state have the opportunity to once again choose the candidate they want to represent them in the White House. If anything, the large turn-out at Sen. Barack Obama's appearance at the Cistern only reinforces that idea.

But those who don't seem to care about politics may just be ignorant about the preliminary election process. They may be asking themselves, what is the difference between a caucus and a primary?

Caucuses and primaries are two methods of achieving the same goal, which is assigning delegates to either the Democratic or Republican Party. Those delegates will then vote in each party's convention the summer before elections. Most states use the primary system, which is basically where voters cast a vote to the candidate they support. In a closed primary, voters can only vote within the party they registered under. In an open primary, they are able to vote in whichever party they choose, but are only able to vote in one primary.

The older caucus system, which was used in Iowa, is a bit more complicated. Caucuses are meetings in which voters join groups that support a specific candidate. Supporters of each candidate try to recruit undecided voters into their groups by standing up and speaking in favor of their chosen candidate.

When all the voters have joined a particular candidate's group, party organizers count the number of members within their groups. They then calculate the number of delegates that will represent a candidate to send to each county's convention.

Democrats use a proportional system to determine the number of delegates, which means that the number of delegates they send to their national convention is proportional to the votes they received in their primaries or the support showed in the state's caucus.

The Republican Party either uses this proportional method or a "winner-take-all" method, in which a candidate with the most support gets all of that state's delegates at the national convention. It all depends on the individual state's processes.

Although this lengthy preliminary process may appear to be complex and outdated, it allows those who want to participate in this country's elections to be represented at the national convention.