The surprising finish by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida revived his candidacy.
The caucuses (cauci?) are a crazy system not representative of the nation and not even representative of Iowa. Who wants to go out in the sub-freezing temperatures to be harangued for hours? In 2016, the last time there were competitive primaries for both parties, just 15.7 percent of eligible voters attended either Republican or Democratic caucuses. The Democrats wisely dropped out of the Iowa caucus, as they are opposite of the no hassle voting that Democrats favor which includes vote-by-mail and other improvements.
How does a candidate win delegates?
During most of the early primaries and caucuses, states award delegates proportionally. That means that each candidate gets a number of delegates roughly equivalent to the percentage of the vote he or she has won. Delegates can be awarded based on results either statewide or in individual congressional districts.
For example, in 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, but with less than 30% of the vote, he only got eight delegates. Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio both got seven delegates in Iowa that year.
Sometimes, there’s a certain amount of support a candidate must register in order to qualify for delegates and many of these states have special rules that allow a candidate who wins the lion’s share of the vote (often 50%) to take all of the state’s delegates.
Things change after March 15. That’s when states have the option to award all of their delegates to whoever gets the most votes in the state’s contest.
The introduction of winner-take-all rules makes it harder for any remaining candidates to accumulate delegates against the race leader.
