I spent a month in rural Iowa before and during the last caucuses, volunteering for Barack Obama, and I understand how the Democratic caucuses work -- or at least how they worked four years ago. Everybody shows up at the caucus location, divides into groups for the various candidates, and then you see who is "viable" -- which requires at least 15% of the people attending the caucus. If your preferred candidate isn't viable, you can then join the group for one of the other candidates (or a group for "uncommitted," which NOBODY did in the caucus I attended). The delegates to the county convention are then allocated roughly proportionally to each candidates' strength in that caucus. The same process is then followed at the county level and the state level.
One of the big unknowns on the Democratic side, and a reason the polls frequently aren't particularly accurate, is the question of who the second choice is of people who support one of the non-viable candidates. (In a field with several different candidates, all of them are going to be non-viable in some individual caucuses -- even the statewide winner -- and the candidates trailing the field are going to be non-viable in a LOT of caucuses.) For example, four years ago, my uncle showed up to caucus for Joe Biden, who wasn't viable at his caucus location. He didn't have a strong preference between Obama and Clinton, and was persuaded by an old friend with whom he'd worked in a lot of campaigns to caucus for Clinton. (As I recall his story, she was boderline non-viable at his caucus location, which was heavily into either Obama or Edwards, and he as persuaded to switch even before the formal count was made.)
I understand how the Democratic side works, and I think the coalition-building that takes place on the Democratic side has real value in teaching people about the poltical process and in building support behind the eventual winner of the nomination. But as I understand it, the Republican side works very differently. My understanding is that everybody shows up, hears some speeches extolling the various candidates, and then casts a secret ballot. Frankly, I don't see that this process provides ANY advantages over a regular primary, other than making sure that the only people who have a voice are those who are willing to spend more time.
But here's my question about the Republican side: What happens after the ballots are cast? Are they counted at that caucus location, and then another vote taken where the only candidates remaining are those who were viable the first time, or are those votes basically "lost," or are they somehow accumulated and used to help the candidate at the next level?
The reason I'm wondering about this is that I think it's likely to have a HUGE impact on who wins on the Republican side. Ron Paul is probably the second choice of almost nobody, and so if the polls are accurately predicting who will attend the Republican caucuses (which is a HUGE "if" given that there's no real contest on the Democratic side and you've got a candidate like Ron Paul on the Republican side), they are probably overestimating Paul's support. On the other hand, I suspect that at least one of Santorum, Bachmann, and Perry is going to be non-viable almost everywhere (if the Republican side operated like the Democratic one), and the second choice of the vast majority of the supporters of all of those candidates would be one of the other ones. If the Republicans operated like the Democrats, whether Michelle Bachmann formally drops out before the caucuses or not would be largely irrelevant, since in all of the caucus locations where she's not viable, her supporters are likely to go to whichever "non-Romney" is viable. And I suspect that if it initially looked like NONE of them would be viable, they'd informally decide which of those candidates to support and pool their supporters behind that candidate before the formal count was taken. If that was the case, I'd be thinking that the polls were probably underestimating the support for the strongest of those candidates (which would appear to be Santorum at this point).
So my question for anyone who can answer it is how the caucuses work on the Republican side with respect to candidates who don't reach the 15% level (or whatever their cutoff is) at an individual caucus location? What happens to the supporters of those back-of-the-pack candidates? Do they have the choice of going with a stronger candidate, or not?