We are desperate for something metric

In news coverage, numbers connote authority merely by dint of their not being mere words.

But all this raises the question of why we overcover Iowa and New Hampshire in the first place. And the answer, as ever, is that we, the political reporting claque, cannot resist anything that looks like a scoreboard. We are desperate for something metric, and we are desperate for early returns. It hardly matters how many or from where. Or how they are counted.

Iowa Republicans To The GOP: Please Don't Ask Us Who Won : It's All Politics : NPR