What is the difference between a caucus primary election and a direct primary election?
In a direct primary election, you go and vote like in a general election and choose who you want to vote for. A caucus election is a bit more complex. First there are precint caucusses (at least in Iowa). Now here it depends on the political party. Republicans will just have a straw poll, count the votes and tell the republican leaders the results, who will then choose the delegates in the state convention. The Democrats system is a bit more complicated. People go to their precint caucus where they are divided accoring to candidate. Any candidate that is not seen a viable is eliminated and the people in the group move to another candidate. There are breaks so that people can talk and decide to what candidate they are moving to. After they do that, they choose a number of delegates to the county caucus according to the percent received in the precint caucus. The county caucus will go through the same process and choose delegates to the state caucus where finally the delegates are chosen