According to ABC News, Obama has one more projected delegate than the runner-up and two more than the candidate in third place in delegates. Yet Obama is the “winner.”^aa

Obama’s 38% of the vote and 8-point lead translates into just 35.5% of the delegates and a lead in delegates of only 2.2 points.

The order of finish in projected delegate for the candidates who finished second and third in votes are reversed.

The minimal relationship between caucus support and delegate allocation results from the system’s malapportionment (rural precincts are over-represented) and the huge number of districts (precincts) in which allocation takes place. In other words, even small variations in the regional vote distribution are magnified.

At Political Arithmetik, Charles has a graph comparing final poll trends, entrance poll (first choice) support, and final delegate percentage. From eyeballing the graph, it appears that the numbers Charles depicts for delegates is a bit different from the numbers noted above, and shows Obama with a bigger delegate lead and the candidates in the same order in delegates as their final reported vote distribution. More interestingly, we see that Edwards indeed was the biggest winner after redistribution from non-viable candidates: apparently he was under 25% in the entrance poll. Obama, however, did indeed do somewhat better, even at entrance, than his polling trend. On that, at least, the mainstream media seem to have their story in alignment with Iowa reality.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, I read in the LA Times that Huckabee had a “resounding” win. Really? It was 34% to 25% for Romney. In what universe is that “resounding”? If we look at delegates, however, it was indeed quite lopsided: 81% for Huckabee, 18% for Romney, and none for the 41% distributed among other candidates.

And while I am picking on media coverage… Why can’t the media report decimals? I have heard various times that Thompson and McCain were tied for third. Did they have the exact same vote totals? No. In the race for that coveted third ticket out of Iowa, Thompson won by 273 votes.^aa I also heard someone on the radio say that Paul had finished fourth (10%, behind those “tied” candidates). Seems to me he has four candidates ahead of him, so that would imply that Paul was fifth.
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1. I am referring to a table from ABC News that Steven has posted at PoliBlog, but ABC is hardly atypical in this absurd game of declaring a “winner.”aaa
2. For those scoring at home, that would be 13.4% for Thompson and 13.1% for McCain.aaa

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