Typically, a candidate needs to obtain at least 15% of the preference votes in a particular precinct to gain any delegates to the county convention. That's the viability threshold. In precincts that assign only two delegates, the threshold is 25%. The delegate numbers are fixed. It doesn't matter how many people show up to make their preferences known. (For a detailed firsthand critical description, see desmoinesdem's multi-part series here).
As I noted yesterday, second choices in the Iowa caucuses are extremely important. Initially, participants divide into preference groups and count heads. If your preference group doesn't produce enough numbers to get your first-choice candidate across the viability threshold, you can count on members of other preference groups to engage in persuasion, lobbying, cajoling, intimidation (and perhaps promises of all-night revelry) if you'll switch to their candidate.
In yesterday's poll in my Diary, only two candidates crossed that threshold. Barack Obama got 23% (555 votes), and John Edwards got 46% (1090 votes). None of the other candidates, including Hillary Clinton (6%-163 votes), came even close.
So here we all are in a precinct in which only two candidates have made it into viability in the first round. As desmoinesdem points out, in the scenario that developed yesterday, the caucus math can get very complicated. Way too complicated for the simple polling template I have available to me here.
For instance, it would be interesting to know how many who made Biden, Richardson, Gravel, Dodd or Kucinich their first choice in our "caucus" yesterday would now choose to back Hillary Clinton and push her across the threshold. If you want to do the math, you can pretty quickly figure out how many participants you would have to persuade to make that happen.
But Dodd (5%-138 votes) or Kucinich (7%-184 votes) might be more persuasive. They might join forces in an Anybody-But-Hillary coalition and pick one or the other of the two men as their collective second choice and get to work on the backers of Richardson and Biden (as well as the write-in-Gore die-hards). There are several additional possible permutations. In other words, if you really were participating in the Iowa caucuses and your preferred candidate didn't cross the viability threshold in the first round, you wouldn't be as constrained as I'm going to make you.
I'm going to pretend we have a completely different kind of caucus. The rules: if your first-choice candidate didn't make the 15% threshold yesterday, you have to choose one of the two candidates who did.
Take the poll.
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