Today is the day after the first votes were cast in the Iowa Caucus, and the media spin is already making people dizzy. With 99.94% of precincts reporting, the vote counts are: Clinton 699, Sanders 695, O’Malley 8. There were 6 statistical breakdown ties that led to coin tosses (all of which went Clinton’s way), and also some polling irregularities and possible O’Malley padding that led to the final result, making it difficult to call this anything but a virtual tie.
The Clinton campaign is spending the morning bragging of a victory in Iowa all over the news. They actually started declaring victory early last night. The corporate media (specifically Andrea Mitchell) cited an “unnamed senior Clinton staff member” last night at approximately 8:30 saying Clinton had “won”, even though only about half to two thirds of the precincts had reported in. Clinton’s vote lead at the time was about 2.5%, bolstered by smaller rural districts that have a more conservative lean to them. This declaration itself is a bit suspicious, as it could have influenced anxious Bernie supporters, who are unaccustomed to the sometimes lengthy and confusing Caucus process, to leave hotly contested contests in more progressive and populous urban precincts that were completely overwhelmed by the turnout.
A total of 484 eligible caucus attendees were initially recorded at the site. But when each candidate’s preference group was counted, Clinton had 240 supporters, Sanders had 179 and Martin O’Malley had five (causing him to be declared non-viable). Those figures add up to just 424 participants, leaving 60 apparently missing. When those numbers were plugged into the formula that determines delegate allocations, Clinton received four delegates and Sanders received three — leaving one delegate unassigned. Unable to account for that numerical discrepancy and the orphan delegate it produced, the Sanders campaign challenged the results and precinct leaders… settled the dispute with a coin toss. -Des Moines Register
The lack of proper preparation and staffing by Democratic Party officials was reported on by The Guardian a week ago, and just like the urban polling places in urban areas that are so severely understaffed in general elections that many potential voters just go home instead of waiting in an 8 hour line, this staffing shortfall and lack of proper training almost certainly led to a suppressed voter turnout and there are reports of people leaving (mostly Bernie supporters) before the final tally was done.
There are also reports of voting irregularities. In Ames 1-3 a probable “no-contest” victory for Bernie (meaning he would win all of the delegates) was delayed by confusion for so long that some Bernie supporters left. This resulted in Clinton reaching the 15% threshold (at 16.1%) and being awarded one delegate. Some of this frustration and confusion was captured on video.
There were more irregularities, like in Polk County detailed by a first hand report on Reddit. Check out 1:48:00 to 1:54:00 on this C-Span video to see some of the problems.
Then, there is also the issue where Clinton’s paid staff in Iowa was training precinct captains how to cheat by padding the results of Martin O’Malley. O’Malley’s supporters overwhelmingly choose Bernie Sanders as their second choice, so the scheme by Clinton staff was to tally the results of the first caucus round on an app, which would tell them how many voters they could safely peel off from their group to send to O’Malley to help his group reach the 15% viability threshold, thus meaning most of his supporters would not go to Bernie. It’s the same effect as gerrymandering, whereby it skews the results so they do not represent the actual will of the participants as fairly. Martin O’Malley ended up with 8 votes, and while there is no way to know how many of these could have been due to Clinton’s plot, it is likely this played a role in the final results too.
One more issue needs to be addressed here. Regardless of who ended up with a handful more of the votes in Iowa or how those results were achieved, the elected delegates are 22-22 coming out of Iowa, a tie. The Clinton campaign and corporate media however are already showing the results as 30-22, claiming that 8 unelected Super Delegates (sometimes called Auto-Delegates) are siding with Clinton. It is inaccurate to tally those results together. Bernie only needs 50% plus one of the elected delegates in order to win. It would be unprecedented for unelected superdelegates to overturn the popular will of voters, and lead to such a devastating exodus of people that it would destroy the Democratic Party and guarantee a conservative Republican sweep virtually everywhere in America up and down the ballot. There is zero chance establishment Democrats would risk that. They are irrelevant to the equation.
The results from Iowa are a statistical tie. Considering every establishment pollster aggregate (including 538) had Clinton up by about 4, these are winning results for Bernie Sanders. The Selzer poll done by the Des Moines Register (called “the gold standard” by Markos) claimed that Bernie would need a turnout of over 200,000 just to break even. Bernie polled 4 points better than predicted by professional polling compilers even with a turnout of only 170,000 (240,000 was the record set in 2008 when people flooded the caucuses to support another insurgent: Barack Obama).
Iowa wasn’t a win for Hillary Clinton, no matter what the corporate MSM pundits claim. It is a shock for the establishment and the first step towards overthrowing a corrupt political system controlled by the rich and powerful.