U.S. News

Finally, The Iowa Caucus Results are in...Well, Some of Them.

Editor Orlando Angelone

DES MOINES, IA (Dukes' Dispatch) - After one of the biggest communication breakdowns in election history, the Iowa Democratic Party has gotten it together enough to finally release the results of the 2020 Iowa Caucus. Well...at least some of them.

The party stated Tuesday morning that they would release all of the results by five PM, then later changing that to some of the results. Many were still sceptical that the IDP would even release the results. According to the Party, the delay in results was due to the failure of an app that was being used to relay the results from the precinct captains to the state party. The app, which was developed by a company named Shadow Inc. failed to report the results, and according to reports by the AP, many of the captains did not understand how the app worked, and were not properly trained by the state party.

This contrasts with the 2016 Democratic Caucus which had no problems in reporting, with results coming in as soon as they were counted, so what changed? Well in 2016 the Caucus ended in a virtual tie, with Hillary Clinton receiving only four more state delegates than Bernie Sanders, those four delegates being the result of coin tosses due to tied caucuses. The Sanders campaign raised issue with this, believing from their internal polling that they had actually won the most votes, which were not released to the public. So in the interest of fairness and transparency, the Iowa Democratic Party decided to change how the reporting worked, and release three different results, the first alignment, which is plainly who the people of Iowa wanted to win, then the final alignment, which is the vote after the candidates who did not meet the 15% threshold are eliminated, and the state delegate count, which is the proportionment of delegates you get from each precinct.

All of that new data required that the reporting system be changed, but it seems as if the Iowa Democrats did it completely wrong, though they will not say completely what went wrong.

But with all of the mishegoss out of the way, who came out on top in Iowa? Well as of the time this is being written, only 71% of precincts are reporting, but this is what we have right now.

Senator Bernie Sanders got the most votes in the first alignment, receiving 24.4% of the vote, with former Mayor Pete coming in second with 21.4%. Senator Bernie Sanders also got the most votes in the second alignment, receiving 26.6% of the vote to once again second place Pete Buttigeig with 25.2%. So this begs the question, who won the most state delegates? That would be former Mayor Pete Buttigeig with 26.8% of the delegates.

Vice President Joe Biden came in a disappointing third in all three results, barely beating Senator Amy Klubuchar.

So with Iowa results in, you may be asking, how did Senator Sanders get the most actual votes in both alignments, but Pete Buttigeig to the most delegates? Well, it's because a vote in a small county is worth more than a vote in a city. Two votes can get you a delegate in Howard County, a county with barely any caucuses, while 100 votes in Linn county, which contains Cedar Rapids, can get you no delegates.

Many have come out and said that this system is unfair, and that it is undemocratic, and many are now calling for an end to the Iowa Caucuses all together. As of now though, no one is sure what the Democratic National Committee and the Iowa Democratic Party will do.

But with Iowa over, the candidates now have their eyes on the first in the nation primary in New Hampshire, which will happen on tuesday February 11th.