Buttigieg, Sanders lead in partial Iowa results
First Democratic race still marred by delays
DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa Democratic Party released partial results for its first-in-the-nation contest showing former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg with a slight lead over progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a race that’s been clouded by a technical glitch threatening the state’s coveted spot on the primary calendar.
The highly anticipated results are the first of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and place two candidates representing opposing ends of the party’s ideological spectrum — a moderate Midwesterner and a liberal icon from the Northeast — battling at the top of the ticket.
The results released Tuesday by the Iowa Democratic Party reflected 71% of precincts in 99 Iowa counties. The party, which has weathered a storm of criticism over its handling of a new mobile app intended to report a broader set of data, has not indicated when the full results would be reported, leaving doubt about how much the results could change later.
“I apologize deeply,” Iowa Democratic Party chairman Troy Price said at a news conference Tuesday regarding how the results have been handled. The party has said the delay had to do with “coding” on its mobile app and was not the result of cyber intrusion.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar rounded out the top five in the tally of State Delegate Equivalents, which are traditionally used to determine an overall winner.
“Obviously, we don’t have all the numbers, but we’re coming out of Iowa in the top three and straight into New Hampshire. And also, remember we’ve got 55 states and territories after this,” Ms. Warren said Tuesday on MSNBC.
The incomplete results showed
Mr. Buttigieg with delegates amassed in all corners of the state, including many rural areas, while Mr. Sanders appeared to have pockets of support in the central and eastern counties that include Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport.
Aimed at increasing transparency, the state party this year released three data points, including the support candidates received on the first vote, before unviable candidates were eliminated in a second round of alignment and their supporters got to pick again. Candidates needed to receive at least 15% of votes at most caucus precincts to receive state delegates.
Mr. Sanders appeared to lead in the first and second popular votes, which the Vermont independent’s campaign may use to spin victory as the Democratic field campaigns aggressively in New Hampshire this week ahead of the state’s primary next Tuesday. Mr. Buttigieg, meanwhile, led in the measure of state delegates he would receive for his support, based on an allocation formula used by the state party.
The partial results and the uncertainly heading into other early nominating contests gave little immediate indication of what the Democratic slate might look like when Ohio Democrats vote in their March 17 primary. As the field winnows over the next month and after Super Tuesday — March 3 — it should become clearer which candidates will be left to mount bids for Ohio’s delegates.
The caucuses also kicked off a whirlwind week in Washington. President
Donald Trump delivered a State of the Union address Tuesday evening, only the second president to give the address while under impeachment. On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on whether to deliver a conviction in his impeachment trial.
“Tomorrow the votes may not be there to impeach Trump, but I’m absolutely confident that in November the votes will be there to defeat him,” Mr. Sanders told a crowd in Milford, N.H., on Tuesday evening after the initial Iowa results were made public.
A strong showing in Iowa was arguably more important for Ms. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg than Mr. Biden, who is still leading in national polls and is expected to do well among the African American community in South Carolina. His campaign objected to the incomplete data’s release before checking it against the paper trail.
“He needs to have a strong showing here, but this is not his sweet spot,” said Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who traveled to Iowa as a surrogate for Mr. Biden.
Just hours before the app unleashed chaos, thousands of Democrats across the state shuffled around gyms, churches and community centers, bantering with their neighbors as they aligned into groups for their favorite candidates.
Matt Tapscott, a Winneshiek County Democrat, said it wasn’t all disorder throughout the night.
“These precincts, these are neighborhood meetings and they’re very grass roots, and at that level it all worked. Neighbors came together. Even people who were very passionate about their candidates. It was very cordial,” said Mr. Tapscott, a Warren supporter who said Ms. Klobuchar was most popular in his precinct.
“Unfortunately, in the reporting process, something happened. That’s not the whole of the story.”
The caucus debacle continued a conversation about whether Iowa, an overwhelmingly white and rural state, ought to continue voting first, or whether it’s time to for it to relinquish its position to a more diverse state more reflective of the nation and the Democratic Party.
“It’s ... very clear and very fair that a conversation about who goes first in a diverse Democratic Party needs to be had,” Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper said at a legislative forum in Columbus on Tuesday. “That will be a conversation, too, after November.”
This wasn’t the first time in recent history that Iowa’s caucuses were bungled. In 2012, Republican Mitt
Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah, won Iowa by a slim margin and went on to win New Hampshire before the GOP announced 16 days after the Iowa contest that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had actually won.
Mr. Romney remained the favorite and captured the GOP nomination to challenge then-President Barack Obama.
The Block News Alliance consists of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, and television station WDRB in Louisville, Ky. Liz Skalka is a reporter for The Blade.