Caucuses

In the United States, caucus (translated as "party assembly" and pronounced in English /ˈkɔːkəs/) is understood as the system of electing delegates in several states of the United States (Iowa, Nevada or Wyoming, among others), the primary or preliminary stage in which each party decides who will receive their party's nomination for the presidency.

Each political party brings together the people who support the different candidates of each official party. At this meeting, the number of delegates is assigned depending on the number of people in the constituency; There is a mathematical formula that determines the number of votes that must be achieved in the caucus, the delegates are elected by proportional representation. It differs from the "primary" which is more like a traditional election.

Once the results of the voting in the states have been computed, the candidate for the presidency is nominated by each party. The president will result from the final elections, to which the candidate of each party is presented.

Origin of the term

As suggested by James Hammond Trumbull, caucus comes from the Algonquian language, a North American Indian nation, in which the term cau´-cau-as´u means &# 34;meeting of chiefs of tribes" or "advice". It seems that it was the Democratic Party that first adopted this term, since in its day it was very prone to incorporate Indo-American words into English. But there is no unanimity about the origin of the term, there are those who consider that it comes from medieval Latin, with the meaning of "vessel".

While in English the plural of caucus is caucuses, in Spanish it is invariable (caucus) since the norm for forming the plural of foreign words that end in -s dictates that they are only variable when they are acute or monosyllabic words.