Having participated in my second Iowa caucus (Dean in 2004, Edwards in 2008), and having suffered the slings and arrows of Kos's endless criticisms of the Iowa Democratic Caucus as undemocratic, I wanted to pass along some precinct "internals" that might interest supporters of the progressive cause...
This was originally posted as a comment, but I wanted to clarify and flesh it out a bit for everyone:
salo commented that
Edwards and Clinton were the second choice by and large. Obama is getting Obama's people but very few others to join him.
Oddd. That could spell trouble for Obama.
It is more complicated than that.
I'll give you an example. At my precinct's first count, we had Obama: 155, Clinton: 54, Edwards: 32, Other + Uncommitted: 62
After the second count, it was Obama: 153, Clinton 66, Edwards: 60.
However, all 12 of the Richardson supporters moved en masse to Obama during realignment. Obama clearly was their second choice, yet Obama wound up with fewer supporters in the final count!
How? Some people who supported Obama in the first instance moved to support Edwards to give him a delegate. Edwards was not viable after the first round of counting, but Clinton was.
All that is a very round about way of saying that Obama may have gotten a great deal of second-choice support... but some people who supported him as a first choice exercised the option of making a second choice knowing the size of Obama's victory. Obama had so much support, he had support to spare.
In fact, in an ordinary instant-runoff voting system, Obama's victory could have been much more substantial than the Iowa Caucus produced. Instant-runoff is blind. People would not have been able to see the outcome of the first round of voting and adjust their strategy accordingly. Edwards supporters, having not met the viability threshhold, all would have been reallocated to their second choice...
If that second choice were Obama, you could have seen him take a much higher percentage of the delegates. However, Edwards might also have come in an anemic third, because he wouldn't have been able to take advantage of Obama supporters second choices!
Clear as mud?