Your post is basically a big anecdote. You have no way of knowing how good Carson was going to do, and thus can't claim that Carson's numbers were not hurt by Cruz and hurt enough so that he could get a win over Trump.
It wouldn’t have taken much of a change to affect the outcome. 4 changed votes in each of the 1500 Iowa voting places would have been enough for the 6,000 vote win that Cruz ended up with.
RE: Your post is basically a big anecdote. You have no way of knowing how good Carson was going to do, and thus can’t claim that Carson’s numbers were not hurt by Cruz and hurt enough so that he could get a win over Trump.
Here’s the fact — the RCP poll AVERAGE had Carson at 7.7 percent. He got 9 percent of the votes in the caucus. He clearly did BETTER than expected.