Even if turnout far exceeds projections, only a small percentage of Iowa’s 3 million residents will participate in the event that plays an outsized role in determining which Republican candidate will face off against President Obama in November — and possibly lead more than 300 million Americans over the next four years.

Despite the national media saturation, the process by which the Iowa caucuses are run can seem incomprehensible even to politically attuned outsiders, and it is rarely explained in detail.

But some quintessential Iowa quirks notwithstanding, the Republican caucuses are rather straightforward.

Iowans who wish to participate on Jan. 3 must first find the voting site of their local precinct. The venues tend to change every four years, so even longtime caucus-goers are advised to double-check with one of the campaigns, the Iowa Republican Party website, or their local newspaper.

There are 1,774 precincts in this year’s caucuses, and many of the state’s rural outposts will see just a trickle of participants. On the other hand, some of the more populous counties combine their precincts into one location, which means that thousands of caucus-goers will gather at a single location.

Blackhawk County, for instance, is holding this year’s caucuses at the UNI-Dome, where the University of Northern Iowa football team plays its home games.

The gatherings are run entirely by the state Republican Party, which will deliver to each precinct a list of registered Republicans as of Nov. 14.

Once people start arriving at their caucus sites, they will be checked in and directed to their seats if they are already registered with the party. Non-Republican voters are allowed to register on site with the GOP upon providing a driver’s license or other photo ID with proof of residency and will be added instantly to the party’s registration rolls and can participate that night.

Seventeen-year-olds who will turn 18 by Nov. 6, 2012 are allowed to take part.

Refreshments are typically provided, and neighbors and friends will mingle before the session is called to order by a volunteer precinct captain.

The caucuses begin at 7 p.m. Central Time, but Iowa GOP officials and the campaigns themselves encourage voters to show up early, since the process typically starts on time. Michele Bachmann’s website, for instance, directs supporters to be at their caucus precincts by 6:30 p.m. and does not mention that the event actually begins a half-hour later.

After a few minutes of procedural business, the captains will move on to the main event: the Presidential Preference Poll.

Each campaign will then be allowed to have one surrogate speak on its behalf. These speeches, which typically last two to three minutes, are among the most important elements of the entire process and figure to be even more critical this year, given the especially high percentage of undecided voters.

“I hope to make a decision before I go in there, but a lot of people will actually go in there, visit with their neighbors not knowing what they’re going to do, and say, ‘Who do you support?’ ” said longtime Iowa Republican activist Becky Beach. “And what happens a lot is people who they are friends with or that they respect, they’ll vote with those people because they know them and like them.”

In the past, well-organized campaigns have placed volunteer speech-givers at almost all of Iowa’s precincts, providing them with talking points for closing the deal.

But in a year that has seen a much lower level of organizing than usual, not a single campaign has announced chairpersons in all 99 counties. Bachmann seems to have come the closest, as her campaign announced earlier this month that she has 91 counties covered.

Mitt Romney’s campaign will not say how many county chairpersons it has in place, though the remnants of the extensive organizing Romney did in the state throughout 2007 may prove invaluable.

At his Ida County precinct in 1996, Iowa GOP campaign veteran Tim Albrecht delivered his first caucus night speech on behalf of Pat Buchanan — while just a high school senior. According to Albrecht, the visual stimuli at each site can have a significant last-minute impact.

“You want to plaster that room with your signs and plaster anyone who will wear one with a sticker, because people like to go with a winner when they are undecided this late,” he said.

The candidates themselves will usually speak on their own behalf at one or two precincts in the more heavily populated counties.

Once the speeches have concluded, voting begins promptly.

Though methods may vary from precinct to precinct, each caucus-goer is typically handed a blank piece of paper on which to write the surname of the candidate for whom they are voting.

“In our precinct, I know this sounds cliché, but we passed around a red-white-and-blue sequined shoebox with a hole slit in the top, and you drop your ballot in there,” said Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn, who plans to attend his local caucus this year but will not vote out of deference to his position.

In contrast to the far more complicated procedures involved in the Democratic process, Iowa Republicans do not maintain a viability threshold, and there is no second-choice realignment vote for candidates with little support.

Votes will be tallied in full view of attendees at a table in the back of the room, where each campaign is allowed to station an observer.

Decisions about misspellings are made by precinct leaders, but a liberal interpretation of voter intent is typically employed. There have been surprisingly few disputes over the years.

The results for each precinct are announced to everyone who is still on hand, and precinct chairs then forward their counts to the Iowa Republican Party.

The state GOP is likely to launch a website in the coming days, which it will use to announce the results as they come in on caucus night.

In 2008, the Iowa GOP tabulated and announced the outcome soon after the caucuses closed, and the party has enacted further improvements that it hopes will help it determine the outcome even more efficiently.

Unless the tally is extraordinarily close, the winner should have enough time to make a victory speech while most TV viewers on the East Coast are still awake.

The candidates who decide to continue their campaigns will then hop on red-eye flights to New Hampshire, where a one-week sprint in the first-in-the-nation primary state begins promptly the next morning.” Thank you Scott!

Dec. 7, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

It may have been Steelers vs. Packers out on the field last night but Bill O’Reilly tried his best to get President Obama to fumble during their pre-Super Bowl interview on Fox News.

As Susan Milligan points out in US News, the President deftly handled O’Reilly’s line of questioning and observes that Obama’s “behavior indicates he is unwilling to engage in petty political food fights.”

O’Reilly: “Does it disturb you that so many people hate you?”

Obama: “You know, the truth is that the people—and I’m sure previous presidents would say the same thing, whether it was Bush or Clinton or Reagan or anybody—the people who dislike you don’t know you.”

The objective of Milligan’s piece was to point out media irresponsibility. But the O’Reilly/Obama interview is also another example of what John Harris and Jim VandeHei explore today in POLITICO: how the President is “playing the press like a fiddle.”

He is doing it by exploiting some of the most long-standing traits among reporters who cover politics and government — their favoritism for politicians perceived as ideologically centrist and willing to profess devotion to Washington’s oft-honored, rarely practiced civic religion of bipartisanship.

Click here to read the entire article on POLITICO.

Fox News Channel Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett announced he’s joining National Journal as a Congressional Correspondent on September 3, just in time to avoid the new war over Fox News‘ front-row seat in the White House Briefing room.

Public Campaign, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Media Matters for America sent a letter Monday to the White House Correspondents Association in response to reports of News Corp.’s $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association. In the letter they ask for the WHCA to “reconsider its decision to allow Fox News Channel a front-row seat in the White House briefing room” calling News Corp.’s donation “a massive ethical lapse that demonstrates Fox News’ inability to function as an objective media institution.”

Media Matters reports current WHCA President David Jackson of USA Today rejected the seating change request, stating: “The decision has been made.”

Jackson’s predecessor, Ed Chen who left Bloomberg News a few months ago and returned to the Natural Resources Defense Council, calls that decision “a travesty.”

Explaining further to Media Matters:
“The vacancy was created because of an ideological conflict,” he said, referring to [Helen] Thomas’ anti-Israel comments that led to her resignation. “To fill the vacancy with another cloud of ideological conflict was most unfortunate and inappropriate.”

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Ending weeks of speculation, the White House Correspondents Association announced the Associated Press will take the front row, center seat in the James S. Brady Briefing Room at the White House once occupied by Helen Thomas.

The association stated the change will take effect Monday and that it was a “very difficult decision.” Bloomberg, Fox News, and NPR all made public plays for the coveted chair, which did not go unnoticed by the WHCA board. The first few minutes of Monday’s briefing might look like a game of musical chairs since the AP won’t be the only ones with a new vantage point.

The board “was persuaded by Fox’s length of service and commitment to the White House television pool” and moved them to the front row seat previously occupied by AP; NPR will shuffle into the second row seat previously held by Fox, next to Bloomberg News.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

After a few jokes about who an “unexpected third party” could be, it’s almost unexpected that NPR would emerge as the dark horse for Helen Thomas’ coveted seat.

But that’s exactly what happened, according to The Upshot, when the news organization that recently dropped the “Radio” from its’ name submitted a formal letter to the White House Press Association.

NPR’s reasoning? Its audience size, scope of programming and the subtle burn that they’ve been in the White House Press Room since the 1970s compared to Bloomberg and Fox News. Once again, August 2nd will be a very exciting day.
Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

If you like to bet on dark horses, consider August 2nd your derby come early.

Helen Thomas’ valuable front row spot in the White House Briefing Room will be determined by that Friday, according to a report from Fishbowl DC. This means the quiet battle between Fox News and Bloomberg will finally come to an end, likely with a whimper rather than explosive bang.

We already speculated about the shifts in seating, but at least we have something to look forward to when the rest of the Beltway runs away for the August recess.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

DC is coming out of a devastating heat wave, but we’re five days away from ending another event: which outlet inherits the seat that Helen Thomas built.

There’s only two groups in contention for the seat: Fox News and Bloomberg News. The former is cashing in a chit from the last White House Correspondents Association reshuffle, which it gave up a front-row seat to CNN in 2007 with the handshake deal that it would take the next opening. Bloomberg’s Al Hunt recently came in an 11th hour plea that the recently expanding news organization be granted Thomas’ seat. The entire argument came out earlier in June with letters from Hunt and Fox News’ Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon were sent to the WHCA.

Of course, no one would say anything until the reorganization, which’ll become official on Friday. So while the temperature and humidity may have eased up on the Beltway, we can only expect negotiations for the coveted front row seat will become muggier and hotter than they had been.

An informal poll from Fishbowl DC found Fox News should get the chair over Bloomberg, but another 25 percent believed yet another outlet should get it.

Of course, below is the full seating chart from WHC Insider, which we’ll have to change in a few days. But who do you think will take the seat: Bloomberg, Fox or some third dark horse lurking in the shadows? Leave it in the comments.

Reliable Sources brings word that Fox News’ spot in the White House press room is being challenged once again–this time by Bloomberg News’ Managing Editor, Al Hunt.

Bloomberg (via Hunt) claims–in shades of CNN’s previous reasoning–they’ve been around longer, are more established and “[w]e write about matters financial and non-financial.” Fox News’ Vice President of News and Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon’s plan relies on a 2007 I.O.U. from the last press room restructuring and the assumption that Bloomberg still covers just finances. The Huffington Post has the full letters here.

There’s no buzz on whether this late Bloomberg bid will work, but at least we have a Fishbowl DC poll. And in case you forget the prime real estate in question, check out WHC Insider’s press room seating chart.

Don’t know what to watch at 10 p.m. for the next two years? Well breathe easy, because Greta Van Susteren’s going to get you through it.

When not keeping up with a Kardashian (left, at the White House Correspondents’ Brunch,) Van Susteren’s has lead Fox News’ coveted 10 p.m. slot since 2002 with On The Record. The New York Times reports the host is keeping her spot for “several more years,” which quashes rumors of a Glenn Beck bump up.

Though Van Susteren may soon find a rival in Lawrence O’Donnell, who will host an as-yet-untitled 10 p.m. show for MSNBC and complete the Keith Olbermann Show Factory moving along. We can’t wait for D.C. to take sides in the Team Susteren/Team O’Donnell wars, if only because things are so boring now that Leno and Conan stopped fighting.