Iowa is a maelstrom which is why a lot of folks advise presidential candidates to ignore it entirely and focus on trying to get wins in other states, like New Hampshire, to build the delegate count.

Vote fraud and dirty tricks, of any kind, are always an unknown. However, I don’t know if Cruz actually WON by dirty tricks in this case after looking at the numbers. It’s possible but not problem. However, let’s look at the data:

* Cruz beat Trump by 6,200 votes or 3.3 percent of the vote. The spread between Cruz and Carson was 34,000+. In order to prove a positive result with the dirty tricks, you have to find real residual gain for Cruz and loss for Carson.
* The Real Clear Politics average of the polling had it 28.6% for Trump, 23.9% for Cruz, 7.7% for Carson.
* It’s easy to presume, as everyone has, that Trump skipping the debate probably helped Rubio and Cruz. Rubio received 6% more than the RCP average and 1 to 6% more than polling the week before; Cruz received about what was expected of him based on the late polling. In other words, “Rubio ascending” was a completely accurate presumption (and seen in the pre-Caucus polls, too).
* Cruz received 27.6% of the Caucuses. While his RCP average was 23.9%, numerous polls though the week before the Caucuses had him anywhere from 19 to 27%; one had him at 25, another had him at 26, etc. A Jan. 26 poll had him at 27, exactly what he received. In other words, when it came down to voting, he held his own with the late polls and slightly above the averages. This would show no real gain from the dirty tricks – Cruz received the amount of votes that polling expected him to receive.
* While Carson had a 1% bump in polls just before the caucusing, he was on a downward spiral since December when he was at 20%. Late polling showed him anywhere from 7 to 10%. One had him as low as 3%. So, while there could have been some gain, he probably wasn’t going to get back into the high teens or low 20s, dirty tricks or not; trends don’t swing that way unless a bomb goes off or something really dynamic happens in the process and this did not occur. In actual voting, Carson received 9.3% of the caucuses or nearly 2% more than his RCP average and slightly better – or even – to what he was polling pre-Caucus. This shows that he held his own and received what was expected of him, based on the polling, and nothing was probably stolen from him.
* Exit polling showed that last minute decisions went with Rubio and Cruz; Carson didn’t receive much of this support and clearly Trump had some people switch and lost support (see not appearing at the last debate even if he raised $6M for veterans).
* Lastly, and most importantly, 185,000+ votes were cast on the Republican side, the most ever in the caucus process there. As turnout increases, all bets are off because there isn’t any knowledge or expectation of these voters or why they are coming out to participate; information can be gathered later from this based on exit polling.
Back of the envelope conclusion: Noting the campaign got caught doing what they did, with evidence from phone calls to even a Cruz captain lying to voters in front of Candy Carson at one polling location, yes, there were dirty tricks. Did it help Cruz win? Probably not.