Election season in the United States will kick off officially with the Iowa caucuses starting late Monday evening. 

With the Republicans having already decided on President George W Bush as their candidate for the next president, the Iowa caucus is essentially the start of the Democrat process to pick a candidate to rival him in the November 4 elections.  

The four main contenders here are Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina,  former  Vermont Governor Howard Dean  and Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri, who won the Iowa caucuses in 1988.

Senator Joe Lieberman and retired General Wesley Clark have decided to skip Iowa to focus on the New Hampshire primary January 27.

Straw polls indicate the Iowa race is nearly tied, with Kerry leading with 26 per cent, Followed closely by Edwards (23 per cent) Dean (20 per cent) and Gephardt at 18 per cent. Nationwide polls, however, still put Dean ahead of the pack.

Essentially, the caucuses involve meetings of party supporters in the state's 1,993 precincts, where they listen to the campaigns of the main contenders at schools,  libraries, churches, government buildings and some private residences.  After that, they are separated into camps supporting the various candidates, with each camp needing at least 15 per cent of the total representation to qualify.

The party supporters will be voting to send 13,400 delegates, or party nominees, to conventions at the states 99 counties March 13.

These delegates are sworn to vote for the candidates they represent. At the end of the day,  the caucus chairman uses a complicated system to calculate how many delegates each camp will send to the county convention, and informs the state party high command accordingly. 

This process is repeated at the county and then the state convention, and then again at the state convention, which finally decides on Iowa's 45 delegates for the party's national convention August 25 in Boston, where the final contender for president will be named.

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Democrats braced for Iowa's cold assessment