Trump Might Lose Under Democratic Rules
We have Donald Trump narrowly favored on the Republican side tonight, but the story might be different if the Iowa caucuses were contested under Democratic rules, which usually require candidates to achieve at least 15 percent of the vote in their precinct to receive any delegates to the state convention. Supporters of candidates with less than 15 percent of the vote, in fact, are recruited by supporters of the other candidates so their votes don’t go wasted.
In other words, second-choice preferences matter a lot under Democratic rules. It’s good news for Trump that they don’t matter so much for Republicans, since Trump has much less second-choice support in Iowa than Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.