Can someone please explain the finer points of counting in the Iowa primary?

[Matilda]

Your voting systems are very different to ours, but I'm looking at the map in the N.Y. Times and it looks like a huge victory for Santorum with all the brown squares, yet he's neck and neck with Romney.

It's obviously not just first-past-the-post, but how does the counting work?

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/results/live/2012-01-03

[brooklynite]

1. Your mistake is assuming that County "A" has the same turnout as County "B" on the map.

Close to half the votes are in probably 2 or 3 of the Counties you're seeing.

[Critters2]

2. A lot of the "brown" counties have smaller populations than the blue or green counties

For instance, I used to live in Wright County, which has about 15,000 people and is brown on this map. My birthplace, Scott County (Davenport and Bettendorf) has around 200,000, and is blue. So, it might take a lot of those brown counties to equal one of the blue or green counties. Cities in Iowa, as in a good many other places, tend to be more progressive than rural areas.

I must say, though, that I'm surprised that Wright County has gone for Santorum. The Repugs there seemed more moderate than that when I was there.

[Matilda]

3. Thanks to both of you for the explanation.

It's easy to forget that even in the U.S., some towns might be very small. It just seemed to be a huge amount of brown on the map, and I wondered if it was proportional voting responsible.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. "all of Iowa’s delegates will be “unbound,” or free to vote for any candidate"

That's the secret here - the votes today are almost meaningless.

Next, the delegate selection process begins, and here’s where Iowa’s system gets complicated. Precinct caucuses will elect delegates to March 10 county conventions, which in turn will elect (from their pools of delegate-attendees) delegates to congressional-district conventions and the June 16 state GOP convention, which will in turn elect Iowa’s delegates to the Republican National Convention. Votes for county-convention delegates aren’t too competitive on caucus night, and more attention is paid to national-delegate selection at the later convention votes.
...
Despite Iowa’s sizable hype, no national delegates will be directly at stake Jan. 3. In presidential voting, the Iowa GOP caucuses are essentially a statewide straw poll.

The Hawkeye State will send 28 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa Aug. 23, out of 2,286 voting delegates total, but all of Iowa’s delegates will be “unbound,” or free to vote for any candidate for president or vice president. Iowa works differently from most states, which will award delegates to presidential candidates proportionally, according to how much of the vote each candidate captures. Most of those delegates will be required to vote for a specific candidate during the first round of voting at the national convention. Iowa’s won’t.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/iowa-caucus-what-actually-happens/