caucus race
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caucus race¹
Where it comes from
From caucus (“special party meeting for vote allocation”) + race (“contest between people”).
noun caucus races
- The competitive process in which a political party selects their candidate, especially presidential; a primary election via caucus. Mr. Gingrich, who is now the minority whip, announced last week that he had rounded up more than 100 commitments from House Republicans for the caucus race to come after the election next year.
- A political competition; the game of campaigning and one-upmanship to get votes and be elected. […] she was backing southern moderate John Spratt in his strong but unsuccessful caucus race for Budget Committee chairman.
caucus race²
Where it comes from
From caucus (“regular party committee meeting of elected MPs”) + race (“contest between people”); a reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, chapter III "A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale", being a nonsensical satire thereof: all participants have to run in circles until an arbitrary end is called and everyone is declared a winner; Alice has to give prizes to them all, and being declared a winner too, the Dodo solemnly takes her thimble and awards it back to her.
noun caucus races
- A laborious but arbitrary and futile activity; an activity that amounts to running around in a circle, expending great energy but not accomplishing anything. With the dominant figure in U.S. politics forced to the sidelines for—perhaps—the rest of the year, the national political situation last week began to take on the unreal air of the Dodo's caucus race.
- A win-win system; a positive system in which everybody wins. Encourage caucus race resourcing: […] That is, the resourcing of the players would need to resemble the “caucus race” in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland – a race in which all the contestants won prizes. The best-known institutional arrangements for resourcing all legitimate comers in a regulator
Translations
Every language
noun political competition
| Español | carrera en comité, precandidatura, primaria, primera ronda |
|---|---|
| Français | course à l'échalote |
noun laborious but arbitrary and futile activity
| Français | course à l'échalote |
|---|
Talk about this word "caucus race." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/caucus%20race. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. caucus race. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/caucus%20race "caucus race." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/caucus%20race.Cite this
@misc{caucus_race_2026,
title = {caucus race},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/caucus%20race},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
