Welcome to the political circus of the Iowa caucuses

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The Democratic frontrunner is running behind. The Republicans have two frontrunners who are quarrelling with each other even as the party establishment quarrels over which one of them would be worse for the GOP future. A candidate who is surging in the first primary state is fading in the first caucus state. And a hotel room that will cost $189 (U.S.) next week is running $495 (U.S.) Thursday, if only you could get a reservation, which you can't.

Welcome to the Iowa caucuses, where the wisdom is no longer conventional, the assumptions are under siege and the candidates will eventually argue that they beat expectations, though probably none of them will.

This is a quadrennial political circus, populated by elephants (the Republicans' traditional mascot) and donkeys (the Democrats' symbol) and, inevitably, clowns (too many to list). The weather is cold (bitterly so, usually), the food is fatty (try the pork tenderloin sandwich), the talk is cheap (except when it appears on television advertisements, when it is very expensive indeed), and the scene is wild (Quebec at Carnaval has little on Des Moines on caucus night, as ludicrous as that may seem).

Usually out of this colourful spectacle come two winners, one from each party, with bragging rights that last only eight days, until the voters in the New Hampshire primary have their say, and usually they don't agree with their Iowa predecessors at all. (If you doubt this, call George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, Richard A. Gephardt, Walter F. Mondale and a passel of others, all of whom won in Iowa only to be smacked down in New Hampshire.)

But right now no one's looking ahead – except former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York. He indicated over the weekend that he might mount an independent presidential campaign if the two major parties nominate fringe candidates, presumably Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who could win the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and Donald Trump, who leads Republican polls nationwide.

But for the next six days all the attention is on Iowa, with its few big urban centres (staid but booming Des Moines qualifies, but you stretch the definition when you add, in declining order of population, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Sioux City), its many rural outposts (with names such as Badger, Buffalo Center, Elk Horn, Goose Lake, Mallard, and – breaking with the animal theme for just a moment – my favourite: What Cheer) and its curious preoccupation with milkshakes that include slices of pie (stop in at Hamburg Inn No. 2, in Iowa City, a favourite candidate stop dating to the Ronald Reagan years).

Of the two races, the Democratic one is the simplest, involving as it does only two prominent figures, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who won the caucuses in 2008 and is regarded as the nationwide frontrunner, and Mr. Sanders, who according to some polls is ahead in Iowa.

The theme of the Democratic contest underlines how U.S. politics have changed. In the past, it was the Republicans who were vulnerable to the charge that they were aligned with Wall Street interests over Main Street imperatives. Today's Republicans are competing with each other over who can decry the loudest the influence of establishment entities – not only Wall Street but also K Street, which is the Washington corridor that is the symbol of powerful lobbyists. And it is Ms. Clinton who is vulnerable, at least in Iowa, for her ties to Wall Street. She accepted $675,000 in fees for three speeches to Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street bank, a figure that Mr. Sanders almost always cites in his Iowa speeches.

The Republican race has many layers of complexity, suitable for a contest that once had 17 combatants. The field has narrowed a bit, but the rebellion in the party has not been quelled. The frontrunners in Iowa are Mr. Trump, who leads the pack according to a CNN poll, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, whose eligibility for the White House is repeatedly being questioned by Mr. Trump because he was born in Alberta.

The party establishment loathes them both, putting its members in the position of opposing the two who today look to be among most likely to be the party standard bearers. Not one of Mr. Cruz's Senate colleagues has endorsed him. Last Friday, the National Review, founded by William F. Buckley Jr. and customarily considered the leading journal of conservatism, published a special issue calling for the defeat of Mr. Trump.

Thus this is even more biting a struggle than the one in 1964, when Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, with the ardent backing of Mr. Buckley and his magazine, won the GOP nomination. At that time, the U.S. election chronicler Theodore H. White wrote in his Making of the President series, the divisions in the party prompted "a bitterness among themselves greater than their bitterness against Democrats." So it is right now, particularly between Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump, and indeed among many of the other candidates.

In a curious position is Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who ranks third, according to the CNN poll. He's part rebel and part mainstream candidate. "He's able to play in both lanes," says Donald T. Critchlow, an Arizona State University historian who is the author of Future Right: Forging a New Republican Party. to be published in the spring. "He has roots with the conservatives but he also appeals to the wing of the party that wants to govern." The three most prominent representatives of that wing – former governor Jeb Bush of Florida and Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio, who ranks third in New Hampshire in some polls – account for 5 percentage points cumulatively.

The establishment wing of the Republican Party didn't take wing at all in Iowa. Its candidates are pointing toward New Hampshire, which holds its primary eight days after the Iowa caucuses. By then, Iowa and its caucuses will be a distant memory, though the caloric intake from the pork sandwiches and the pie milk shake will be stubbornly persistent.