After months of candidate debates, stops at county fairs and coffee shops and everywhere else across Iowa, tonight's caucuses in our neighbor to the north will pick the first official winner of the 2012 campaign.

Should we care?

Going into this evening's GOP event, journalists covering it still thought the outcome could be unpredictable.

One-time frontrunners like Michele Bachman and Rick Perry are hoping for respectability. Mitt Romney thinks he'll win; Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are making noise; Newt Gingrich is blaming attack ads for making his poll numbers fall.

Are you paying close attention to Iowa, or do you think the state is too small and too different from the rest of the country to matter? Or do you believe that the winner will be the for-sure front-runner?

Are you ready for the political ads that will dominate the local airwaves -- from local, statewide and national candidates -- in the coming months? Are you looking forward to the election cycle here or dreading it?

Happy 2012. For better or worse, the election year is here.