Why does Donald Trump’s respectable finish in the Iowa caucuses look so much like a stinging defeat? After all, for a conventional candidate, Trump’s performance could easily be spun as a victory. In profoundly hostile territory – Iowa’s GOP voters are deeply religious, while Trump is … Trump – the New York property magnate came in second. Indeed, he won 15,000 more votes than Rick Santorum did when the former senator won 2012’s caucus. But then Trump’s candidacy has been anything but conventional.

For the most part, the novelty of Trump’s approach has served him well. The massive rallies; the tweets that are anything but poll-tested; the disdain for “retail” politics: These have catapulted him to the top of the national polls.