Iowa Democratic caucuses: live commentary

Live commentary on the US Iowa Democratic caucuses. Also: Sinn Féin surges ahead of Saturday’s Irish election. Guest post by Adrian Beaumont.

9:27am Sunday The exit poll for Saturday’s Irish election has been released.  The governing Fine Gael has 22.4%, the far-left Sinn Fein 22.3% and Fianna Fail 22.2%, so there’s only 0.2% between the top three parties.  The Greens have 7.9%.  The full exit poll is in the comments.  No vote counting in Ireland until tonight AEDT.

5:15pm Friday With all precincts reporting, Buttigieg provisionally wins Iowa’s state delegate count by 0.1%.  However, the AP will not declare a winner owing to irregularities.  We will probably never know for sure who won Iowa’s state delegate count.

Sanders won both of the popular vote measures.  He won the “initial” vote by 3.5% and the “final” vote by 1.5%.

4:37pm This tweet explains why Sanders is doing so well with these satellite caucuses.

4:35pm Late counting Iowa drama!  I’m not sure what the “satellite caucuses” are, but there were four of them, one for each of Iowa’s Congressional Districts.  Three of them have reported, and they are all very strong for Sanders.  There’s still one to go.

With 97% in, Buttigieg now leads Sanders by just three state delegates or 0.15%.  Sanders leads by 3.5% on the “initial” popular vote, and by 1.5% on the “final” popular vote.

10:41am In the FiveThirtyEight post-Iowa model, Biden’s chance of winning a pledged delegate majority has plunged from 43% to 21%, with Sanders up to 37%.  The probability that nobody wins a pledged delegate majority (contested convention) is up to 27%.

10:20am Thursday More Iowa results!  With 86% in, Buttigieg leads Sanders by 26.7% to 25.4% on state delegates, the measure the US media is using to call a winner.  Warren has 18.3%, Biden 15.8% and Klobuchar 12.1%.

On two other measures, Sanders is still ahead.  He leads Buttigieg by 24.3% to 21.6% on “initial” popular votes.  He leads by 26.1% to 25.5% on “final” popular votes after realignment.

4:05pm 71% of precincts are now in for the Dem Iowa caucus.  The latest 9% haven’t made much difference to the figures.

2:50pm My Conversation article on these caucuses is up.  We need to see if there’s a significant impact on national polls from these results.  The next contest is New Hampshire on February 11; polls close by 12pm February 12 AEDT.

There was a big moment in Trump’s State of the Union address today.  At the end of the speech, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi literally tore it up.

10:30am New York Times analyst Nate Cohn says results reported so far are representative of the whole state.

10am Wednesday We FINALLY have more Iowa results.  With 62% of precincts reporting, Buttigieg leads Sanders by 27% to 25% on State Delegate Equivalents, the traditional measure that most of the media has focussed on.  Warren has 18%, Biden 16% and Klobuchar 13%.

On the two other measures, Sanders leads.  He leads on the “initial” popular votes by 24.5% to 21.4% for Buttigieg.  He leads on the “final” popular votes after realignment by 26% to 25%.

8:15pm More than EIGHT hours after the caucuses began, still only 2% has been reported!  I hope we have better results by tomorrow morning.

3:57pm In Ireland, a new poll has Sinn Fein in outright first on 25%, with Fianna Fail on 23%, Fine Gael 20% and the Greens 8%.

3:43pm Nate Silver

3:15pm Turnout at these caucuses in on pace for 2016.  In 2016, 172,000 participated in the Iowa Dem caucuses, well down from the record 240,000 in 2008.  In 2008, the Dems had a charismatic candidate in Barack Obama.

3:05pm With 1.9% in, Sanders is on top with 28% followed by Warren at 25%, Buttigieg 24%, Klobuchar 12% and Biden just 11%.

2:57pm On the Dem side, we’ve only got 32 of 1,765 precincts reporting their post-realignment votes.  Much slower than in 2016, when 85% had reported by this time.

2:55pm In 2016, 187,000 votes were cast in the Republican Iowa caucuses.   With 83% in, 29,000 votes have been cast in 2020.

2:35pm Still only 1.7% counted, with Buttigieg leading Sanders by 1.3% after realignment.  Biden down to 14%.  Hurry up!!

1:56pm In the Republican caucus, Trump has over 96% of the vote.  Republicans love Trump.

1:54pm By “after realignment”, I mean after the initial division.  Candidates polling below 15% in a particular precinct are declared unviable, and their supporters are asked to pick a viable candidate.  Candidates originally declared unviable can become viable if they pick up enough to make it over 15% in the second round.  It’s explained in this Conversation article.

1:50pm The AP has Buttigieg leading Sanders by 27% to 24% on final alignment numbers, followed by 19.5% for Biden, 15% Warren and 14% Klobuchar.  1.3% of precincts are in.

1:40pm The New York Times results page now gives Sanders 408 final votes (after realignment presumably), Buttigieg 380, Biden 310, Warren 277 and Klobuchar 176.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at the University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

The final RealClearPolitics poll average for Iowa gave Bernie Sanders 24.2%, Joe Biden 20.2%, Pete Buttigieg 16.4%, Elizabeth Warren 15.6% and Amy Klobuchar 8.6%. As I noted in Friday’s Conversation article, polling for these caucuses has often been inaccurate. The caucuses begin at 12pm AEDT, and the process is described in that article. I will begin commenting on the results about 1:30pm after I return from bridge.

Elsewhere, the far-left Sinn Féin has surged in the Irish polls ahead of this Saturday’s election. Sinn Féin is equal first with Fianna Fáil in one recent poll, and two points behind in another. There is a chance that the two dominant Irish parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, will fail to win a combined majority of the seats. Both these parties are conservative. Other parties likely to win seats are left-wing, so a left majority is a possibility.

Polls in Ireland close at 10pm local time (9am Sunday AEDT). Exit polls will be released then, but no votes are counted until the next morning (Sunday evening AEDT). As Ireland uses Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system, it is likely to take at least a few days to finalise all counting.

And in Britain, Boris Johnson appears to want a hard Brexit on December 31, when the transition period ends.

708 comments on “Iowa Democratic caucuses: live commentary”

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  1. And for those tut-tutting at the Democratic Party out there, a little history might help:

    If Monday’s problems were an isolated example, that would be one thing. But this is the third time in as many caucus nights when Iowa has struggled to determine the winner in real time.

    Eight years ago, Mitt Romney was declared the narrow victor over Rick Santorum on the night of the Republican caucuses. But the absence of full results on caucus night left the outcome unresolved. Weeks later, Santorum was declared the official winner, but too late for it to give his campaign the boost he needed.

    Four years ago, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battled throughout a long night of counting. Clinton’s campaign claimed victory without knowing for certain that she had won. In the end, her margin was less than half a percentage point, and the Sanders campaign never truly believed that he had lost.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-breakdown-in-iowa-casts-a-spotlight-on-the-caucus-system/2020/02/03/86f51282-45f4-11ea-8124-0ca81effcdfb_story.html

  2. The DNC should consider this a non-election and not allocate delegates. Later on, if Iowa can get their shit together and the candidacy is still up for grabs, they can hold another caucus. The Dems have to be able to draw a line under this and move on.

  3. Diogenes @ #257 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 10:36 pm

    The DNC should consider this a non-election and not allocate delegates. Later on, if Iowa can get their shit together and the candidacy is still up for grabs, they can hold another caucus. The Dems have to be able to draw a line under this and move on.

    The Republicans didn’t do it in 2012, so why should the Democrats?

  4. There has always been a theory that to win you need the center.

    But with today polarized and cyncial political reality, anyone in the center is most like must be a liar. People trust someone who says stupid shit, because you cant fake stupid.

    Its very unfortunate, but its why Bernie is the only one who has a chance to beat Trump.

  5. After this mess, maybe the Democrats will ban caucus from their presidential primary (for future primaries, too late this year)?

  6. Caucuses are a quaint holdover from the 19th century that among other things disadvantages voters who don’t have the time to be harangued by candidates representatives for a couple of hours. They should have been put in the bin long ago. Its not the only feature of their excruciatingly complex primary system that would benefit from being upgraded to the 20th, let alone 21st century.

    (One adds, the Iowa caucuses were widely regarded as a sideshow until Obama won in 2008 which probably has contributed to the process continually breaking under the strain)

  7. Simonsays:
    Tuesday, February 4, 2020 at 11:22 pm
    “Caucuses are a quaint holdover from the 19th century that among other things disadvantages voters who don’t have the time to be harangued by candidates representatives for a couple of hours. They should have been put in the bin long ago. Its not the only feature of their excruciatingly complex primary system that would benefit from being upgraded to the 20th, let alone 21st century.”

    Well, yes. Quaint and anachronistic.

    However, considering the presidential election seems to a (very 21st century) twitter competition, I worry what they might replace it with.

    It’s not surprising that in a twitter competition you end up with a twit!

  8. By the way, as mentioned, there was a Republican caucus in Iowa as well.

    Trump won with a huge margin, getting 96% of the vote (his third primary win already – one being a walkover).

    I was curious about who was standing against him. Who are Bill Weld, Joe Walsh and Rocky de la Fuente?

    It’s surprising and a pity that there doesn’t seem to be a credible alternative. Surely 96% of Republicans don’t think The Donald is the best there can be?

  9. From the Guardian blog:

    “Donald Trump’s approval rating is the highest it’s been in three years, per Gallup. The Jan 16 to 29 poll found Trump has a 49% approval rating.”

    Four more years …

    #DraftOprah

  10. I was thinking “surely they have to have the results by now” as I was making my coffee. Nope lol. Then I start streaming CNN to see what they’re saying about it and on the screen is a strap with the headline with a quote from Warren saying she can’t understand why they only plan to release half the results. Wait what?? Half the results?? Half?!?! Surely that can’t be right. How long do we have to wait for the other half? Incompetence write large. Trump must be loving this.

  11. When it initially started to become clear — right around 10 p.m. ET — that something had gone drastically wrong with the reporting of the Iowa caucus results, the initial reaction of the state party was, um, understated.

    They were conducting “quality control” to ensure the results were totally good! Nothing to see here! Better to be a few minutes late than a few points wrong!

    At that moment, and literally every moment between then and now, the Iowa Democratic Party has demonstrated a deep misunderstanding of the stakes of this vote count that they so clearly have botched. This is the first vote of the 2020 presidential election we are talking about! The eyes of the country (and the world) are on them. And somehow, they seem not to get that.

    The latest example of this what’s-the-big-deal approach came Tuesday morning when, already being pilloried for their inability to report the vote count, Iowa Democrats announced that they would release the majority of the votes by 5 p.m. ET.

    Say what? The “majority?” What exactly does that entail? Like 95%? Or 51%?

    According to Mandy McClure, the state party’s communications director, the latter number is closer to reality. McClure confirmed to the Des Moines Register’s Brianne Pfannenstiel that around 50% of the precinct tallies would be reported Tuesday afternoon. “Moving forward — just like we would would have on caucus night — we will continue to release results as we are able to,” added McClure. “We are also executing our plans and procedures to gather the paper documents and chasing any additional precincts to report results.”

    Is this real life? After not being able to announce results on the night of the caucuses (or the morning after) and conducting a master class in whatever the opposite of crisis communications is, the state party has arrived at the genius solution of releasing half of the vote totals 18 hours after the actual caucuses were held? Who are the rocket scientists who came up with this plan?

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/04/politics/iowa-democratic-party-caucus-2020/index.html

  12. Meanwhile at the Republican primaries…

    Joe Walsh@WalshFreedom
    ·
    3h
    I spoke in front of 3,000 Iowa Republicans last night. It was like a MAGA rally. I told them we needed a President who doesn’t lie all the time. The crowd booed me. I told them we needed a President who wasn’t indecent & cruel. The crowd booed me. 1/

    Joe Walsh@WalshFreedom
    ·
    3h
    I told them we needed a President who doesn’t care only about himself. The crowd booed me. I told them the Republican Party needed to do some real soul searching. The crowd booed me. 2/

    Joe Walsh@WalshFreedom
    ·
    3h
    I told them that, because of Trump, young people, women, and people of color want nothing to do with the Republican Party. The crowd booed me. I told them I’m a pro life, pro gun, secure the border conservative, but we need a President who is decent and represents everyone. 3/

    Joe Walsh@WalshFreedom
    ·
    3h
    The crowd booed me. I got booed, yelled at, jeered, and given the middle finger for the 3-4 minutes I spoke to these 3,000 people. Afterwards, I realized again that 99.9% of these folks don’t support me. They don’t care that Trump lies, they don’t care that he’s cruel, 4/

    And you can get the picture. Trump’s tariffs have hurt Iowa farmers, yet they still back him.

  13. This Iowa Dem chair guy should have been out last night giving this press conference letting everyone know what was happening. The lack of communication has made this stuff up even worse.

  14. Well Biden flopped alright and Buttigieg seems to have been the beneficiary.

    Currently seems like a two horse race between Sanders and Buttigieg. Who knows when we’ll have the other 38% of the vote.

  15. Yep, it’s a near-fatal result for Biden IMO. His value proposition is that he is the most electable moderate. That line was capable of surviving a defeat by Sanders and Warren, because everyone knows that the Iowa Dem Party is a stronghold for white liberals.

    And it could survive a defeat by Buttigieg, because everyone knows that Mayor Pete is going to sink like a stone in the southern states.

    But, despite having 20 times the exposure as her in the main stream media, Biden is basically running neck and neck with Klobuchar. This is surely nowhere near good enough.

    He’s obviously going to hang around for a while yet, but he’s a wounded beast IMO. The brains trust of the moderate Dems must already being considering the possibility of exiting him from the race in a dignified way before he destroys any chance that either Buttigieg or Klobuchar can prevent Sanders (or, although I think it’s only a remote possibility, Warren) from becoming the nominee.

  16. With this Iowa caucus process and outcome, I am reminded of what humorist and entertainer Will Rogers once said:

    “I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat”.

  17. OK ok. If these bunch of smucks cant collectively get out more than 160000 registered democrats between them in Iowa, with none of them able to truly break free of such a mediocre field (if either Bernie or Pete ‘win’ with less than 30% – especially with that low turn out then its disaster stations folk) the democrats definitely need a Reality TV star to energise proceedings and get folk interested in voting come November to take down Trump.

    If Oprah isn’t available then I suggest the best ever player of Survivor and his wife as a joint ticket: who better to outplay outwit and out survive the Donald than Boston Rob and Amber: America’s new heroes.

  18. This is a terrible result for the main candidates.

    – Biden for the reasons that has been mentioned.
    – Bernie because he was supposed to be the candidate who inspired people to turn out in droves, yet turnout is barely equal to that in 2016.
    – Warren, ditto.

    However some good news from Nevada:

    Democratic officials in Nevada tried to assuage fears that their Feb. 22 caucuses would be a repeat of the Iowa meltdown. Officials said that they would not use the same app or vendor used in Iowa, despite previous plans to do so.

    William McCurdy, the state party chairman said, Nevada Democrats “can confidently say that what happened in the Iowa caucus last night will not happen in Nevada.”

    “We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”

  19. Just filing this for posterity:

    And it could survive a defeat by Buttigieg, because everyone knows that Mayor Pete is going to sink like a stone in the southern states.

    🙂

  20. I dont know what you peeps are on about. When Klobuchar is on stage with Trump in the Presidential Debates, no-one will be talking about the Iowa Caucus cluster shenanigans.

  21. Booty-judge! Booty-judge! 😀

    In an early Iowa caucus vote count, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) held a slight popular-vote lead, while former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg led among a measure of state delegates.

    With 62 percent of precincts counted, Sanders earned 26 percent of the popular vote; Buttigieg hit 25. By both measures, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) is in third place with 20 percent of the vote, and former vice president Joe Biden placed fourth at 13 percent.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2020/02/04/daily-202-a-bad-night-for-biden-in-iowa-is-good-news-for-buttigieg-klobuchar-and-bloomberg/5e390df288e0fa7f82543cb6/

    It’s all about the Delegates.

  22. Big A Adrian @ #282 Wednesday, February 5th, 2020 – 10:08 am

    Right, so Bernie with about 4000 more votes than Buttigieg somehow has less delegates than him.

    Go figure :-p

    If you look at the map of Iowan Precincts you’ll see that Buttigieg won more of them. Sanders probably got more votes in the city precincts. However, like Hillary winning over Trump in the popular vote, that’s not what counts in the end.

  23. Right, so Bernie with about 4000 more votes than Buttigieg somehow has less delegates than him.

    It’s the SDEs that count at the end of the day.

  24. “If you look at the map of Iowan Precincts you’ll see that Buttigieg won more of them. Sanders probably got more votes in the city precincts. However, like Hillary winning over Trump in the popular vote, that’s not what counts in the end.”

    Its what we call a gerrymander – and is positively anti-democratic.

  25. It isn’t much different from how our own parliamentary system works. It isn’t enough to win the popular vote, you have to win it in enough individual electorates (or precincts, in Iowa’s case) too.

  26. I just watched David Axelrod have his say on the first day of the Democratic contest. He suggested combining Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina into a mini ‘Super Tuesday’ so that it would provide a clearer snapshot of how all likely Democratic Party voters are feeling about the candidates.

    Nevada has a large Hispanic population.
    Iowa is largely White and Working Class.
    South Carolina has a large African American population.
    New Hampshire is largely White and educated, East Coast Middle Class.

    Sounds good to me.

  27. c@tmomma: “Just filing this for posterity:

    And it could survive a defeat by Buttigieg, because everyone knows that Mayor Pete is going to sink like a stone in the southern states.”

    Based on the published polling, Buttigieg is averaging around 5-6 per cent support in most of the southern states, including Florida. He’s doing a bit better in Virginia, which is rapidly changing in culture and demographics due to the continuing expansion of suburban Washington across the borders.

    In fact, he’s not doing wonderfully well beyond the eastern seaboard and mid-west, eg: most of the latest polling in California has him below 10 per cent. He’s even not doing particularly well in Ohio.

    Now, I assume that you would argue that the polling figures in some of these states might change now that Mayor Pete’s campaign is starting to build “momentum”. And I certainly think that’s possible in areas such as California, the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, Florida and, of course, Ohio.

    But the problem of the deep South remains. It’s really quite unfair that the primary results in these states – which, other than Florida, Virginia and North Carolina (and perhaps, in a decade or so, Texas), the Dems have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning – should be so critical in determining who runs as the Dem candidate. But they were a major factor in helping Hillary in 2016 and I reckon they will greatly favour others (Sanders and, if he’s still in the race, Biden) this time.

    I might add that, as I posted yesterday, I also expect the preponderance of show over substance around Buttigieg is also going to bring him unstuck sooner rather than later.

  28. Cat:

    Starting with several different states in a mini Super-Tuesday of sorts really seems like a far better approach than the current system. Not only is it more representative of both the party and the country at large, but if one state shits the bed like Iowa did last night, its not nearly as disasterous.

  29. Asha Leu, as far as I know, all Australian electorates have roughly the same populations, and at least the AEC continually redistributes the boundaries to try and keep even numbers. The Iowa counties on the other hand are not.

    In the Iowa primary, if my understanding from GG’s video is correct, at the third stage, they actually weight the delegate count to favour less populated counties – basically the opposite of what we try and do, and what everyone else calls a gerrymander.

    And as the guy in the video says, the popular vote should be considered at least as important as the delegate count.

  30. Yep. Which means Iowa is Nigel compared to 3rd March.

    I believe the Rolling Stones wrote a song about Super Tuesday, called Amy Tuesday IIRC.

  31. Looking like a shocking result for Biden so far. Yes, it’s just the first contest and only a fraction of the total delegates, but he’s unlikely to do particularly well in New Hampshire either, and by the time Super Tuesday rolls around, he’s going to be competing with the likes of Bloomberg for moderate votes as well.

    Normally a poor showing in Iowa isn’t *that* big a deal, but when your entire platform is based around being the most electable guy in the room, its not a good look.

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