I guess I need to look deeper into what you are saying because I dont understand that. What do you mean by that?

Can you break it down for an idiot like me?

So each precinct gets delegates that are predetermined and that's based on how many people voted in previous elections. For example, precinct A may have 7 delegates to award and precinct B may have 6 delegates to award because 500 people voted in 2018 in A and 400 in B.

Now, in THIS election, if 10,000 people show up for B and only 1 person shows up in A, they still get the same delegates (7 for A and 6 for B). In theory, a vote in precinct A would be worth 10k more than B. Granted, I'm using an extreme example here, but the idea is that you CAN have a disproportionate voices in this system. However, the REASON for it is that you're trying to determine what's likely to happen in an actual election by using historical data. You don't want to have a scenario where Republicans switch to Democrats, throw the election for someone else, etc. It's a protection mechanism.

That's not actually the reason Buttigieg edged out a win over Bernie. There are two different sources of a popular vote/delegate count split in Iowa: geographic variations in the difference between a precinct's caucus and general election turnout, and variations in how concentrated or evenly spread a candidate's supporters are.

Say two precincts have a similar number of voters show up in general elections, and thus send the same number of delegates to the state convention. If the caucus turnout in the first of these precincts is at 20% of the general election level, while the other has a 30% caucus turnout, then votes in the latter will be more inefficient. In the case of a cold night in snowy Iowa, with many people still having a hangover from the Super Bowl, turnout in the state's more urban places, and college towns in particular, was probably higher than in its rural parts, giving an advantage to the rural over the urban candidate. Could go the other round too, btw!
Either way, you punch above your weight in terms of state delegates (relative to your popular vote) if you win the places where turnout dropped off more from general election levels.

Additionally, the rules for state delegate allocation systematically and intentionally disadvantage candidates with a very concentrated supporter base. The extent of this penalty for a lack of geographic diversity is small, but it's on purpose. This again slightly hurt Bernie compared to Buttigieg.

Ranked choice voting in action.

Fuck Kossuth county and whatever asshole got away with doubling the size of their county.

why the fuck does iowa have 99 counties in the first place? california has 58, ffs

In Cali everything is far apart, so they probably didn't need more counties. Teeny towns in Cali are like 30-40 miles apart. Big towns are like 100-500 miles apart.

Seriously just make it an even 100

Wtf. They need to be conquered and united.

Gerrymandering by R and D assholes. Between that and the EC makes the rural vote worth like 2.3 -1 ratio va urban. R were smart to jump on this and fight it in court. It literally the only thing that gives them a chance in general elections

This post was edited by theCrossbones on Feb 7 2020 05:57pm