Doors are closed in the Iowa caucuses. Here are the early leaders.

[brooklynite]

CNN

It's 7 p.m. local time in Iowa, which means all 1,678 precinct locations have shut their doors to start caucusing. Early entrance polls show Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren leading.

Here's what happens now: Neighbors will hear messages from the state party chair, local officials and possibly campaign representatives. They will then show their first preference for president.

Voters will split up into different sections of the room dedicated to their presidential candidate of choice. Typically, a candidate needs 15% of the vote to remain viable, as determined by the amount of people participating in the precinct location. Smaller locations may have different viability thresholds.

After that: If a candidate is not viable, their voters can realign to another viable candidate or join together to create a group in support of another candidate that meets the threshold.

[Loki Liesmith]

1. That's really not informative lol

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Thanks, my dear brooklynite! Glad to hear it. n/t

[Blue_true]

3. Wasn't there some concern that the Sanders campaign would declare an early victory?

I would guess is that if 8:30 comes and they are silent, then things aren't going well for them.

[Amishman]

4. With the caucus process I don't think they could know at all at that point

A head count at over a thousand sites is damn hard to coordinate even for the running it

[Blue_true]

6. What was stated is they purposely had people at every big site to

call in the numbers for the first round. If those numbers were good for Sanders, his campaign would declare victory to cause some people to not stay for the second round and move to other candidates besides Sanders.

[maynard]

5. We caucus in Nevada

Too time consuming. I did it once and I won't ever do it again. There needs to be a better way. I went to the precinct caucus. That was good because Hillary showed up outside and I got some great pictures. Again, too many people who did not know what they were doing because it is only done every 4 years. Time consuming. By default, I was able to go to the county caucus...on a different day. Too many people who did not know what they were doing. People were impatient and tried to take over. Only one vendor selling food. Line was long and they ran out of food. A lot of people left. People were passionate about their candidates and tempers flared. One whole day of my life that I was never going to get back. Time to go back to primaries. One person, one vote. done and recorded.