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
At this point, it's been 3.6 hours since the start of the caucuses and 1.9% of precincts have reported results, which extrapolates out to knowing the results in a mere 189 hours, which would be at 9:30 pm next Tuesday, after voting in the NH primary has already closed.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) February 4, 2020
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.
meher baba,
Pete Buttigieg has been rapidly attempting to rectify his problems with the African American community. He now has an African American Co-chair of his campaign, he has been receiving endorsements from African American legislators and Mayors, he has diversified his campaign staff and is trying to achieve equity wrt all demographics. He has also consulted African Americans to hear their views and treats their input seriously. Plus he has been choosing the cutest African American girls to stand behind him on stage:
😀
“That’s not what gerrymander is.”
Its exactly what a gerrymander is – giving the same weight to less populated electoral divisions as more heavilly populated divisions.
It literally means that a vote from someone in a highly populated metro district is worth less than a vote from a sparsely populated rural district
Candidate Pct. Votes Del.
Sanders 26.3 % 28,220 —
Buttigieg 25.1 27,030 —
Warren 20.7 22,254 —
Biden 13.2 14,176 —
Klobuchar 12.4 13,357 —
Total votes from 62% of precincts
No, that’s not a gerrymander. A gerrymander is the deliberate drawing of district boundaries to favour one set of candidates over another.
Any time you break elections up by regions you’re going to have a potential split between overall vote and the sum of the regional results. Even splitting things up by state does the same thing – the only way to avoid it entirely would be to just have an overall national popular vote.
Frankly, nitpicking this difference in Iowa misses the point entirely. The importance of Iowa isn’t any of the delegates, SDEs, first preference or post-realignment votes: it is solely and only about the media coverage that comes out between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
Big A Adrian:
Fair enough – I wasn’t aware of those disparities.
That’s not actually what a Gerrymander is, though. Gerrymanders occur when voters are actually fairly distributed from electorate to electorate, but the boundaries are contorted in bizarre ways to favour the side making the boundaries (typically giving themselves lots of narrow victories and their opponents massive majorities in less seats.)
@Big A Adrian A gerrymander is realigning electoral unit boundaries in order to concentrate as many of your opponents voters in a small number of electorates as possible while drafting the boundaries of other electorates in a way that gives your party a modest lead in those. It would normally require a certain amount of intention to manipulate the process.
The term you are actually looking for is malapportionment, however I don’t think that either term applies to the Iowa caucuses either, or at least, not in an absolute sense. There is some limited malapportionment in the calculation of county delegates but it is not as significant as you imply and is certainly not 1:1 country to city.
SimonKatich
“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.”
And if it’s Sanders vs Trump, then nobody will be talking about the Iowa Caucus. Everyone will be talking about 4 more years of Trump.
Sorry folks, but Sanders is unelectable. My other concern (beside a Trump victory) is that he weighs on the entire Dem ticket.
Big A Adrian @ #282 Wednesday, February 5th, 2020 – 10:08 am
Like Hillary won the popular vote and boofhead is the President. It’s the US of A!
In any case, the difference in delegates is going to have little impact in either Sanders or Buttigeig’s chances going forward. The important thing is that – for now – both have the status of frontrunners. I don’t think either of them will be disappointed with tonight’s result.
No, that is not what a gerrymander is. What you’re describing is malapportionment.
Kakuru @ #307 Wednesday, February 5th, 2020 – 10:41 am
Thank you, oh great Oracle! On the basis of your insight I must cease all inclination to back Sanders immediately.
c@tmomma:
“meher baba,
Pete Buttigieg has been rapidly attempting to rectify his problems with the African American community. He now has an African American Co-chair of his campaign, he has been receiving endorsements from African American legislators and Mayors, he has diversified his campaign staff and is trying to achieve equity wrt all demographics. He has also consulted African Americans to hear their views and treats their input seriously. Plus he has been choosing the cutest African American girls to stand behind him on stage.”
All good tactics on his part. But, as I said yesterday, have a listen to the lyrics of those rap songs.
And it’s not just the African-Americans in the south who are at best lukewarm towards gay people: it’s a majority of the folk in the southern states, and is reflected in their laws: Alabama, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Oklahoma are all places in which is it still legal to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
As Dave Chappelle said in a sketch on Saturday Night Live back in 2016: “it’s a big country and it ain’t all like round here.”
Or, as we call it here, the Bjelkemander.
ok, so technically gerrymander is deliberate manipulation of the boundaries. I accept that no one deliberately designed this primary specifically to disadvantage Sanders.
The point remains though, the effect is the same.
Apparently the technical term for this particular gerrymander effect is “packing”, which is “concentrating the opposing party’s voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
The point is, the effect is bad for democracy.
By the way, the Iowa Democratic Party weights the delegates by the region’s Democratic vote in the last presidential election, so the rural regions that vote Republican get down-weighted.
The challenges facing Bandt following a lacklustre performance under Di Natale:
meher baba:
I think your point holds true for the general election – unfortunately, Buttigeig is likely to have some real trouble in certain southern states the Dems will need to win in November.
But I’m not sure it’s going to be such a factor in the primaries. Even right in the heart of the Bible belt, you’d have to think that there wouldn’t be nearly as many homophobes among registered Democrats as among the general population. And if he can at least manage a solid second or third in these places, strong results in more liberal areas could still prove enough.
I could well be wrong, though.
@Big A Adrian The point is, the effect is bad for democracy.
No, the point is that you continue to double down on facts that half the participants in this forum have now pointed out to you are patently false.
Oh wow, so Pete is gay – and apparently married to a man??
Sorry, there goes his chances out the window lol. No disrespect to gay people intended – but this is America, homophobia is just too strong. Terrible and unjust, but true.
Also, says on his wiki page he is only 38 – I though you had to be over 40 to run for president??
There’s only 62% of the vote count released. Perhaps it’s worth waiting for the full results?
“Thank you, oh great Oracle! On the basis of your insight I must cease all inclination to back Sanders immediately.”
You’re welcome Bellwether! You Sanders types do seem to be in desperate need of a reality check. I’m here to help. 🙂
Oracle out.
You have to be 35 to qualify for Potus. And yes, Buttigieg is gay and married.
As someone who has listened to a lot of Hip Hop over the years, I completely get where MB is coming from. There’s a lot of very blatant homophobia there. I’m not suggesting that is completely representative of the African American community in the US, but it very much exists. I don’t see Buttigieg’s campaign surviving the south or even more diverse states. I still expect Biden will perform well in the south so I’ve far from written him off. Sanders probably the slight favourite, but I confess a bias in his direction.
Hi Angorafish – what-evs dude.
My point still stands – Bernie has 4000 more votes than Pete and yet somehow is behind him.
The reason for that is the exact same effect of a gerrymander.
Whatever the term you want to call it, its unfair and its undemocratic.
Methinks this not the results they were expecting.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/iowa-caucuses-democratic-party-to-announce-majority-of-results-today-after-election-debacle/news-story/dc8bb239353e556db520294615feedc2
For those stressing about Biden’s performance, take heart in the fact that Bill Clinton scored all of 2.8% of delegates in the 1992 Iowa primary.
Big A Adrian:
It’s 35. I’m not sure off the top of my head who the youngest President was, but I can’t imagine there’s ever been one younger than Buttigeig. (JFK and Obama both had a decade on him, IIRC.)
I’m in two minds about his age myself. It’s definitely a refreshing change from the retirement home that comprises most of the other frontrunners, and he benefits from a certain gravitas that, say, Marco Rubio never had. But he also definitely looks his age, and it may be hard for people to truly take him seriously as a potential President.
No, the reason for that is that the possibility of results like that are baked in as soon as you start from a basis of splitting things up by any kind of regions / boundaries at all.
There’s no doubt that the Iowa caucuses have been schemozzle, and in the long run will hopefully speed up the demise of that fairly unrepresentative state being some sort of early litmus test of candidate viability. But I think it will all be forgotten soon enough. New Hampshire votes next week, South Carolina and Nevada soon after, and then of course Super Tuesday (featuring heavyweights like California and Texas) in a month’s time. Iowa will end up being irrelevant, as it probably should be anyway.
On the results so far, it seems that Buttigieg will get a bit of a boost, while Sanders has confirmed his position as the progressive standard-bearer (especially since he’ll probably also win in NH next week). Klobuchar also looks to have exceeded expectations, though as she started so far behind, that might be too little too late.
The losers look to be a Biden and Warren, though I think Biden will come back if he wins comfortably in South Carolina, as polls suggest. Warren really needs a strong result in NH next week (given she is a Senator from next-door Massachusetts), or the narrative will start to firm that she is fading.
All the others probably should have given up by now, and probably will after NH next week. We will then see the field formally start to shrink to the leading four (Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders & Warren), with Klobuchar holding on by her fingernails for a few more weeks.
That said, all the remaining candidates get a chance to reboot following the Iowa debacle. There will be no real media narrative of a “winner” moving forward, and all eyes will start to look to New England for the next lot of tea leaves to read. Of course, Iowa’s ability to pick the eventual winner is grossly overstated, with only Carter in 1976 and Obama in 2008 eventually claiming the nomination.
None of the remaining candidates fill me with great confidence about the general against Trump, who for all his faults as President, is a pretty good campaigner. Biden is too old and too vanilla, Buttigieg is gay and too young, Sanders is too old, cranky and crazy, while Warren is female and too much of a policy wonk. (I should stress that most of these “drawbacks” don’t bother me at all, but rather how conservative swinging voters might react.) Despite that, Trump’s approval ratings remain at historic lows, and he is there to be beaten. I just worry that the candidates on offer won’t be able to do it.
True. But Clinton was a bit of a dark horse at the time, not the frontrunner positioning himself as the most electable candidate.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from over for Biden. There’s many more contests to go, and there’s still a number of paths to victory open to him. But it’s not a great start for him.
Sooooo how about that other 38% hey Iowa?
Interesting to note the right wing Dems and their supporters are already dropping Biden like a hot scone. The establishment right are such a fickle bunch. The fact that they were supporting him at all shows how tone deaf they really are. But it’s good in the end as, while he’s not the best candidate for the job, Buttigieg is a far better option than Biden, who would be an even bigger mistake than Clinton was.
Of course, Bloomberg is sitting in the background waiting to make his debut. I very much doubt he will take anyone off Sanders or Warren but he will probably hurt the “moderate” candidates a lot.
Asha Lau
The youngest-ever President was Theodore Roosevelt, who was 42 when he assumed office after McKinley was assassinated in 1901. JFK was 43 when he was elected, while Clinton was 46 and Obama was 47. The oldest-ever President was one Donald J Trump (70 when he assumed office in 2017), while Reagan was 69. That record may yet be smashed next January, should either Biden (77) or Sanders (78) win the Presidency in November.
BigAAddrian
“For those stressing about Biden’s performance, take heart in the fact that Bill Clinton scored all of 2.8% of delegates in the 1992 Iowa primary.”
In Iowa, Clinton was up against a local hero, Senator Tom Harkin, who polled 76% of caucusers.
Firefox:
It’ll be interesting to see how Bloomberg does. Despite the amount of money he’s throwing into the race, I think he’s going to disappoint. Many a candidate has tried the “ignore the early primaries and focus on the big states” approach, and generally they’ve crashed and burned. The problem is that everyone’s talking about the winners/runners-up from the early states and by the time the primaries you’re focussing on roll around, they’ve already sucked up all your oxygen.
It is how it is. Just as each State gets 2 senators regardless of population, size, GDP or proportion of banjo playing rednecks. And in Aus, dont get me started on how Tasmania gets 5 MPs in the lower house with SA 10, despite having over 3 times the population of Tassie.
The system is as it is. Democrats need to win some conservative and centrist tending states in the Senate and the Electoral college. Winning popular votes by winning California other left leaning states by huge margins doesnt help.
Hugoaugogo:
Cheers. I didn’t realise Clinton was younger than Obama when he was elected!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1224844221305315333
The female presenter wearing blue on the CNN panel (sorry I don’t know her name) just nailed the problem with Biden. His supporters have little enthusiasm for him. She was at one of his events and saw the lack of energy for herself. He may be a nice guy and very well known but he just doesn’t inspire people.
“Despite the amount of money he’s throwing into the race, I think he’s going to disappoint.”
***
Yea I think he will too but the sheer amount of money he’s bringing to the fight will do some damage on it’s own. It’s now whether he can put his mouth where his money is [sic] and capitalise on his huge spend.
The biggest African American rapper, Lil Nas X, atm, is openly gay.
https://youtu.be/r7qovpFAGrQ
🙂
The New York Times have their election night forecast up, and have Buttigieg as a 3 in 4 chance of retaining his lead in SDEs once all results are in (with Sanders being the 1 in 4 chance of overtaking him).
They also have Sanders as a 7 in 8 chance of retaining his lead in the first preference statewide popular vote, and a 6 in 10 chance of doing the same with the post-realignment vote.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/03/us/elections/results-iowa-caucus-live-forecast.html?action=click&module=ELEX_results&pgtype=Interactive®ion=NavigationZ
He will disappoint me because it means another nail for Klobuchar. First the rise of Buttigieg. Now, with a flat result from Biden which she may hope to gain traction from, she will have Bloomberg spending big in the same crowded space.
Klobuchar cant compete on funds leading into Super Tuesday… unless Bidens donors cross over. Next debate will be interesting (ish).
“And in Aus, dont get me started on how Tasmania gets 5 MPs in the lower house with SA 10, despite having over 3 times the population of Tassie.”
***
Or how the ACT only has 2 Senators with a population of around 400,000, while Tassie has 12 Senators for a population of around 500,000.
@C@tmomma Lil Nas X is the Billy Crosby of rap. His primary appeal is to white guys.
Also, he’s a one hit wonder so ‘biggest’ is a bit misleading, as is calling him a ‘rapper’.
Just a note that Iowa has a total of 41 delegates of the 3979 pledged delegates at the convention. In practice getting +/1 is unlikely to change the result. This leaves aside that in practice the convention is unlikely to be contested – the primaries have tended to end in a snowball.
“Winning” the Iowa caucuses doesn’t give anything except a PR boost. Various campaigns can spin it how they like, but frankly are deluding themselves that masses of voters are going to switch between Buttigeig and Sanders depending on the result. Doing ‘well’ (Buttigeig and arguably Kloubacher) or ‘badly’ (Biden) also may have implications but again a percent or so isn’t going to make a difference – its all in the ‘vibe’.
Given how the race is developing I suspect we won’t be seeing any major departures until after Super Tuesday, and honestly that only because so many delegates being awarded turns 10% candidacies into unwinnable propositions.
America is a lot more tolerant than Australia. They have had SSM for longer than us, and not enacted after a silly plebiscite thingy. They have had legalised marijuana for years in many states and we can’t even get it in the ACT!
Sure, there are pockets of intolerance and bigotry, and because it’s such a big place those things are magnified, but they are also leaders in battling bigotry and intolerance.
Firefox
“He may be a nice guy and very well known but he just doesn’t inspire people”
Alas, I can attest to that. I was at an event in Iowa back when Biden first ran for President. He was dull and wonkish. The crowd went… mild.
Thing is, Biden might actually make a good President. He’s a safe pair of hands. I don’t think the US necessarily needs a President who’s passionate, inspirational, polarising, etc. The US just needs someone who knows how to run the country.
AngoraFish @ #344 Wednesday, February 5th, 2020 – 11:50 am
So, I should point out how many famous LGBTQI stars there are in America instead? How about I start with Ellen?
Kakaru,
Did you see Pete Buttigieg’s speech from Iowa last night? Just great.
“America is a lot more tolerant than Australia”
***
Lol not Trump’s America. It’s a deeply polarised country.
And pot is still illegal federally in the US, even for medical uses. It’s just individual states which have legalised it.
There’s areas in both countries that are tolerant, just as there are many areas that aren’t.