Caucuses make you show up and face your neighbors. People can be appealed to personally to maximize one candidate over another, and many present already know who most others are supporting, so alliances can shift based on who else shows up.
In the Iowa past, there really wasn’t a standard procedure for the straw vote, so each caucus used their own method if they wished. The reason it wasn’t standardized is because it didn’t have any consequences, as delegates to the next (county and district) levels can’t be committed to any candidate anyway.
This next time, the procedure will be *somewhat* more monitored and standardized and the ‘winner’ will actually end up with at least some delegate votes at the national convention if there is an actual ballot fight.
Yup.