After months of nonstop cable TV chatter and a political story line worthy of an Aaron Sorkin parallel universe, it’s finally time for the country to start picking its presidential nominees. But this time might be different — Californians’ votes could really count for the first time in decades.

As the Iowa caucuses scheduled for Monday and the early primaries that follow begin to shape one of the most unpredictable presidential contests in years, California’s political junkies are licking their chops about the possible impact the state’s huge cache of delegates could have come June.

“It looks like there’s a greater than usual chance that we’ll matter,” said Jack Pitney, a political expert at Claremont McKenna College.

The reason: It’s totally conceivable that both the Democratic and Republican primaries could stretch on for months. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are locked in a tight Democratic race that no one imagined a few months ago. And three or four strong GOP candidates in a still-crowded field could easily emerge from the battles of Iowa and New Hampshire as front-runner Donald Trump continues to amaze and confuse most political observers.

Independent voter Daniel Lambton, a 58-year-old San Lorenzo resident, couldn’t be more thrilled.

He said the limited influence that California’s late presidential primary typically carries is an injustice to the 38 million people who live here. “The whole political system is so screwed up,” said Lambton, a retired Alameda County worker who hopes to see Trump become the GOP nominee. So “a close election where Californians’ opinions count would be a great thing.”

But experts caution that all the theories about a long, politically hot spring could still fall apart. So they advise waiting at least a few weeks before getting too excited.

By then, we’ll know if Sanders is able to upset Clinton in Iowa and whether Ted Cruz managed to wrest any victories away from Trump ahead of Super Tuesday on March 1, when voters in 11 (12 for Republicans) mostly Southern states will cast ballots.

“There’s still plenty of time for the dynamics of the race to change dramatically,” said nationally renowned election prognosticator Larry Sabato, who directs the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Who knows what will happen? This campaign is nutty!”

On the Democratic side, recent polls show Clinton, the former secretary of state, enjoying a comfortable lead in Nevada’s late February primary and ahead by 30 percentage points or more in key states such as South Carolina, Florida and North Carolina.

But a pair of Sanders wins in Iowa and New Hampshire could easily propel the Vermont senator’s campaign through the dozens of nominating contests scheduled for early and mid-March, increasing the chances that California’s primary, scheduled for June 7, will count.

“Democrats’ rules make it impossible for any candidate to lock up a competitive race early — and if Sanders has a strong showing in these first few primaries, he’s in a good position to keep the race going for a while,” Pitney said, noting that the affluent, liberal Bay Area would be “prime hunting ground” for a surging Sanders.

But political experts agree that the chances of a Republican nominee being decided in California are far more likely.

Recent Republican presidential elections have all had two distinct waves, said Paul Mitchell, a Sacramento-based elections guru. The first fight is for the hearts and minds of conservative voters in states such as Iowa and South Carolina. Then there’s the battle to become the favored GOP establishment candidate — the one who always seems to win the nomination in the end.

Right now, two candidates on the hard right — Trump, the blustery billionaire from New York, and Cruz, the evangelical U.S. senator from Texas — lead the field, while more moderate contenders like Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie are clawing at one another for third and fourth place.

“If I were to write a script describing how the Republican primary could be decided in California, it would begin a lot like this,” Mitchell said. “Here’s the bottom line: The longer it takes for a mainstream Republican to break through, the longer it will take for this primary to fully evolve.”

In all, 2,286 GOP delegates are up for grabs, and a candidate needs a simple majority to clinch the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer. California alone has 172 Republican delegates — more than the first four states holding nominating contests in February combined.

California’s huge pile of delegates mattered more in 2008, after the Legislature voted to move up the presidential primary to February. And because Democrats and Republicans both had hotly contested primaries that year, the state was the biggest prize in a 23-state “Tsunami Tuesday” held in early February. Presidential candidates from both parties campaigned here aggressively. Clinton took home a majority of the Democratic delegates and John McCain won the GOP primary.

But California lost its status in 2011 when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law moving the presidential primary back to early June, remarrying it with all other California primaries — a move that helped the state save an estimated $100 million in election costs at a time when revenues were plummeting because of the economic downturn.

By the time Californians vote this year, all but five other states and the District of Columbia will have done so, and close to 2,000 delegates — more than 85 percent — could already be spoken for.

Still, a little more than four months from now, we can still matter.

Sabato cited California’s Democratic presidential primary on June 5, 1984. Gary Hart won the state, leaving Walter Mondale about 40 delegates short of what he needed for the nomination. Mondale didn’t clinch it until the Democratic National Convention, held the following month in San Francisco.

“The results will need to come down just right — like a coin landing on its edge,” Sabato said. “Can it happen? Sure. Does it happen often? No.”

Unlike other states where delegates are awarded “winner take all,” almost all of California’s delegates are distributed proportionally to the winners in each of the state’s 53 congressional districts. Each win comes with three delegates.

That means victory in a Marin County congressional district could mean as much to one of the Republican presidential hopefuls as a win in Orange County or the Central Valley, where most of the state’s registered Republicans live.

“In 48 hours, we’ll know more about whether either of these races could be fought all the way to California,” said Dan Schnur, a former GOP strategist who directs the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “But the chance that Californians will be able to watch at least part of this campaign in person rather than on TV or the Internet like usual is exciting.”

Contact Jessica Calefati at 916-441-2101. Follow her at Twitter.com/Calefati.