caucus race
caucus race noun: the competitive process in which a political party selects their candidate, especially presidential; a primary election via caucus.
Noun (1)
caucus race (plural 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.1993 October 16, “Solomon Drops Out of Race To Be G.O.P. House Leader”, in New York Times
- 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.1993, M. Barone, G. Ujifusa, R. E. Cohen, “The Almanac of American Politics 1994”, in National Journal, page 176
Noun (2)
caucus race (plural 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.1955 October 17, "The Dodo's Dance", in Time magazine
- The American economic system is beginning to resemble the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland. Is it not something of a contradiction to cut taxes to facilitate the resurgence of buying power that will increase the demand for appliances and, especially, vehicles —and at the same time enforce a...1975 February 17, John Rossouw, "To the Editors", in Time magazine
- 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...1996, Christopher Hood, David K. C. Jones, Accident and Design: Contemporary Debates in Risk Management, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 224
Forms of caucus race
| plural | caucus races |
|---|
Origin of caucus race
From caucus (“special party meeting for vote allocation”) + race (“contest between people”).
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.
Questions about caucus race
- What does caucus race mean?
- Caucus race means the competitive process in which a political party selects their candidate, especially presidential; a primary election via caucus.
- What part of speech is caucus race?
- Caucus race is a noun.
- What is the plural of caucus race?
- The plural of caucus race is caucus races.
Words near caucus race in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: caucus race (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “caucus race.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/caucus_race. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.