I'm just curious, how many people here actually understand how delegates work and how Iowa awards delegates? I'm not a pro-Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination, but every conversation I've had with people up to this point was based on the presumption that they understood how the Iowa caucus works, or the primaries in general for both parties.
Cruz got 8 delegates, Trump got 7, Rubio got 7. Technically, Cruz came in first and the other two tied for second. However, since the gap is literally one delegate, it's pretty asinine to make this the focal point.
1,237 delegates are needed for the Republican nomination.
Everyone is saying that Trump "lost". But surely you've all seen the chart of how much Trump spent proportional to the votes he got, which is significantly lower than the other candidates. If we were to base the results on a dollar cost to benefit for his campaign then Trump had an outstanding victory and actually far out performed the other candidates. This is something that I would expect of a "competent" businessman, not that I'm inferring that I believe Trump is competent, but take that as you will.
It really just seems to be like the only reason this is a "big" deal at all is because of
1. A complete lack of understanding of how the system works.
2. Willful ignorance.
3. Media poop-slinging.
For the note, on a purely mental level I understand how Trump coming in "second" and emphasizing that is an effective way to disparage the man. Coming from any sense of understanding of what actually happened in scope of the primary system it doesn't make any sense though.
Welp, there's my post of the year folks. Time to go back into lurking.