‘The last Iowa caucus?’ Confusion reigns over first 2020 Democratic contest
The lead-off Democratic presidential contest dissolved into chaos and confusion, with Iowa Democrats unable to determine an immediate winner in their first-in-the-nation caucus, leaving an indelible blemish on a byzantine political tradition and providing little clarity on the 2020 race.
The Iowa Democratic Party blamed reporting inconsistencies and technical snafus for their inability to release full results on Monday night, allowing each of the top candidates to claim a solid performance and move on to New Hampshire, which holds its primary in one week.
Pete Buttigieg even declared victory shortly after 12:20 a.m. ET, when none of the results had been officially reported.
“So we don’t know all the results, but we know by the time it’s all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation because by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious,” Buttigieg told a crowd of supporters in Des Moines.
The Buttigieg campaign’s internal tracking showed that with 77 percent of precincts reporting, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor, led the delegate count, according to an aide with the campaign. A senior Democratic official who spoke with the campaign confirmed their assessment. Still, it was unclear which candidate would win the raw vote total.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign added to the uncertainty by releasing its own internal numbers early Tuesday morning that showed the Vermont senator with a slight delegate and vote lead with nearly 40 percent of precincts reporting.
“When those results are announced, I have a good feeling we’re going to be doing very very well here in Iowa,” Sanders told his supporters.
Joe Biden, who led most of the national polls heading into Monday, took a more measured approach.
“We’re going to walk out of here with our share of delegates,” said Biden, who appeared eager to turn the page in the primary calendar. “So it’s on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and well beyond. We’re in this for the long haul.”
Elizabeth Warren declared the race “too close to call,” and even Amy Klobuchar, who seized the opportunity as the first candidate to speak, framed her performance as “punching above our weight.” Later, Klobuchar’s campaign manager claimed the Minnesota senator was running even with Biden. Warren’s campaign manager said he believed Biden was running in fourth place.
Yet no one could know for sure. As of press time, none of the results had been reported.
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report,” Iowa Democratic Party communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement Monday night. “This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”
A caucus that was intended to shed some amount of direction in the campaign instead demonstrated incompetence that seems likely to threaten its standing in the future.
“We may be witnessing the last Iowa caucus,” David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, said on MSNBC.
Even when results are eventually announced, they will be viewed skeptically, as Biden’s campaign made clear in a letter from its general counsel to the Iowa Democratic Party chairman, complaining of “acute failures” statewide.
“It’s hard to have confidence in any result at this point,” said Amanda Loveday, an adviser to the pro-Biden super PAC, Unite The Country. “Every campaign will have their own questions about anything that’s released.”
Iowa’s failure to produce a clear winner deprived any candidate of gaining real momentum into New Hampshire, where Sanders is the favorite after his overwhelming 2016 primary victory there against Hillary Clinton.
Michael Ceraso, a Democratic operative who previously worked for Sanders in 2016 and Buttigieg last year, said the fiasco may have been most costly to Buttigieg and Warren, who invested in deep, sophisticated turnout organizations in the state.
“It did save Biden from the inevitable questions on whether he has the ability to win. This only benefits the Sanders campaign who can claim a victory regardless of the outcome,” Ceraso said.
The esoteric caucus system drew withering scrutiny all night, as videos and images of coin flips determining precinct winners, important tabulations being conducted by hand, and candidates reaching viability seemingly on a whim spread across cable news and social media.
“Letting cameras film the sausage making is not good for the future prospects of the Iowa caucus,” tweeted Brian Fallon, who was an aide on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Some Iowa Democrats worried that the nonstop TV coverage and intense scrutiny applied to this year’s caucus would further threaten Iowa’s traditional place at the start of the presidential nominating process, as voters got an up-close look at an inherently messy process. Throughout this race, many Democrats already questioned why an overwhelmingly white state played such a pivotal role in the nominating contest in the first place, especially in a party made up of a sizable share of nonwhite voters.
Those concerns are now likely to linger even as the primary moves on to New Hampshire. And more and more Democratic leaders are openly calling for change.
“If you’re looking for a state whose people represent the diversity of America, look no further than Illinois,” J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, tweeted. “It’s time for the most representative state in the country to be the first in the nation.”
ON TO NEW HAMPSHIRE
The delay in reporting caucus results had one unexpected beneficiary: New Hampshire and its Feb. 11 primary.
For much of the Democratic race, voters in the first-in-the-nation primary state have felt overlooked and underappreciated compared to Iowa, which has received the lion’s share of candidate visits this cycle.
But with the outcome in Iowa still uncertain as Americans went to bed Monday night, and the anticipated flood of media coverage for the winners poised to be diluted by events in Washington this week, New Hampshire could now take on larger significance.
“The later tonight that results come out, the less of a ‘bump’ the eventual winner gets out of Iowa,” former Kamala Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams tweeted. “Fewer hours pre-Trump State of the Union and Senate impeachment vote to seize attention and, thus, momentum. New Hampshire is licking its chops.”
The Democratic candidates are now rushing to the state. Andrew Yang even invited supporters to come join him at the Manchester airport when he arrives at 4 a.m. Tuesday.
Yang, Biden and Buttigieg are all scheduled to attend multiple campaign events in the state Tuesday. Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar and Michael Bennet are still juggling their campaign schedules and the Senate’s impeachment trial, which is scheduled to conclude on Wednesday evening.
“This race started here in Iowa, but from tomorrow it will run ocean to ocean, east to New Hampshire, and then west to Nevada, then down to South Carolina,” Warren said in Des Moines Monday night.
This story was originally published February 4, 2020 at 1:17 AM with the headline "‘The last Iowa caucus?’ Confusion reigns over first 2020 Democratic contest."
