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The preliminary results are now in for the Iowa caucus, following the nightmare that happened overnight that initially left Iowa without a winner.
In what has been considered an embarrassment to both the Democratic party and the United States, many are now questioning the purpose behind allowing the caucus process to continue.
Results are now trickling in, and Bernie Sanders and Buttigieg seem to be tied for the lead so far. Buttigieg is leading with 26.9%, and Sanders has 25.1%, followed by Warren at 18.3% and Biden at 15.6%.
A tie between Sanders and Buttigieg was decided by a coin toss. Buttigieg won.
Many were very surprised that Biden, who is doing well in nationwide polls, didn’t fare better than he did.
Earlier on Tuesday, Bernie Sander’s campaign sent out an email stating that their internal results were showing Sanders with a “comfortable lead.”
The email stated, “As a result of an extraordinary grassroots campaign, fueled by thousands of volunteers who knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors, our internal results sent to us by precinct captains around the state indicate that with close to 60% of the vote in, we have a comfortable lead.
Our numbers also show Pete Buttigieg is currently in second, followed by Elizabeth Warren, then Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden.”
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Before Sanders left for New Hampshire, the first primary state in the nation, he took the time to thank his volunteers.
“I want to thank, once again, thousands of Iowa volunteers that we had who were part of an extraordinary grassroots movement which knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors which enabled us to do as well as we did,” he said.
He also took the time to voice his displeasure over how long it was taking for the results of the Iowa caucus to be released. In a statement to the Des Moines Register, he said:
“Obviously, I suspect I speak for all of the candidates. I am extremely disappointed by the inability of the Iowa Democratic Party to come up with the results in a timely manner. I don’t know why in 2020 it should take so much time.”
When the nation woke up on Tuesday morning, many were surprised to find out that the results of the Iowa caucus had not been determined yet. This was because the party was working to resolve “inconsistencies” that stemmed from three sets of data that were recorded by precinct chairs across the state.
The Polk County Democratic Chairman Sean Bagniewski told CNN that he had no way of reporting paper results from his county’s precincts, even though he had boxes of the results available.
“There’s no way to report them. We’ve got them,” he said. The results were said to have been delayed by an app issue. A company called Shadow Inc. built the app. Shadow Inc. is connected to the nonprofit progressive digital strategy firm, Acronym.
State records show that Shadow was paid more than $63,000 by the Iowa Democratic Party in two payments over November and December, and so far the party has stated that there has been no evidence of hacking. However, cybersecurity experts were alarmed that the app’s creator hasn’t been publicly disclosed.
Bagniewski also expressed concerns about the app, saying, “When you have 1,700 precincts in one state, it should be a couple of months-long process of training folks, testing out the app, making sure it is downloaded and that wasn’t happening here.”
Mandy McClure, a spokeswoman for the state party issued a statement on Monday that denied that the major delays were caused by the new app.
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” she said, and added that it was “simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion.”
She continued, “The underlying data and paper trail is sound, and will simply take time to further report the results.”
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Following the Iowa Caucus debacle, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg put out preliminary numbers that suggested that they both did well, with surprisingly lower results for Biden.
The results that Bernie released covered 40% of precincts that show him on top with almost 29%, followed by Buttigieg at 24%, trailed by Warren at 21% and Biden at 12%.
By contrast, the results that Buttigieg put out were less comprehensive and focused more on his personal campaign than on the campaign as a whole.
In those results, Buttigieg got 28 percent of the state delegate equivalents, which isn’t too far from where he sat with Sander’s results.
Update: The Iowa precinct chair says that the app got stuck during the last step when it tried to upload a picture of the precinct’s results.
They were finally able to upload the picture and take a screenshot, but the app showed different numbers than what the screenshot had shown.
Troy Price, the Iowa Democratic Party Chair, released a statement that detailed the Iowa Caucus results delay.
“Last night, more than 1,600 precinct caucuses gathered across the state of Iowa and at satellite caucuses around the world to demonstrate our shared values and goal of taking back the White House. The many volunteers running caucus sites, new voters registering as Democrats, and neighbors talking to each other about the future of our country demonstrated the strength of our party.
We have every indication that our systems were secure and there was not a cyber security intrusion. In preparation for the caucuses, our systems were tested by independent cybersecurity consultants.
As precinct caucus results started coming in, the IDP ran them through an accuracy and quality check. It became clear that there were inconsistencies with the reports. The underlying cause of these inconsistencies was not immediately clear, and required investigation, which took time.
As this investigation unfolded, IDP staff activated pre-planned backup measures and entered data manually. This took longer than expected. As part of our investigation, we determined with certainty that the underlying data collected via the app was sound. While the app was recording data accurately, it was reporting out only partial data. We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately.
Because of the required paper documentation, we have been able to verify that the data recorded in the app and used to calculate State Delegate Equivalents is valid and accurate. Precinct level results are still being reported to the IDP. While our plan is to release results as soon as possible today, our ultimate goal is to ensure that the integrity and accuracy of the process continues to be upheld.”
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