Since I’m tired of people asking about Iowa:
The vote results reported on caucus night, and now revised to show Santorum in the lead, are based on a tally conducted by caucus attendees. Unlike Iowa Democratic caucuses, they’re not scaled by anything and aren’t necessarily reflective of the eventual outcome. However, since the caucus attendees are (at least theoretically) the same people that vote on the delegates to the county conventions that vote on the delegates to the Congressional district conventions that vote on the delegates to the state convention that votes on the delegates to the national convention, one would hope that the results would in some way reflect the caucus-night tallies.
That being said, “reflect” is a wonderfully broad term and can’t be used for any actual calculations. So I’m just pulling the Iowa numbers until a bit later in the that state’s process. It’s not like the state really has that many delegates anyway.