After Review Of Precincts, Buttigieg Gets Most Delegates In Final Iowa Count

Once completing their review of 95 precincts, the Iowa Democratic Party released updated vote numbers and a new national delegate estimate. New numbers show former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Peter Buttigieg leading Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) by 0.1 percent, and remains unchanged from previous estimates. 

If no requests to recount are announced, Buttigieg is set to win 14 delegates in Iowa, according to the state Democratic Party. Sanders will receive 12, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will get eight, former Vice President Joe Biden will receive six, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar will get one.

The party has revised 55 precinct reports, a total of about three percent of precincts, after Buttigieg’s, Sanders’ and Warren’s campaigns reported inconsistencies following the caucuses last week. 

The Iowa caucus process has devolved into chaos with issues with a faulty app, an overwhelmed call-in line and inconsistencies coming from the party delaying the official release of the results. Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price told reporters on Friday that the mistakes made during the Iowa caucuses were “categorically unacceptable.” However, he declined any inquiries on the issues surrounding the errors made, saying they’d be made public  through the “course of the (independent) investigation.”

One issue is whether or not the party can make corrections to obvious mistakes on worksheets filled out by precinct chairs during the caucuses. The worksheets are meant to show the work of how each person voted at each caucus. 

Since these pages are legal documents, the party says no changes can be made to them. “We cannot go back and change results because it would be us changing the data, changing the information provided from each of the precincts,” said a party aide. Another aide added, “”We follow the math worksheets and we are obligated to report what is given to us.”

No candidate has yet to ask for a recount of the nearly 1,700 caucus sites in Iowa. However, Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir told CNN Sunday that the Sanders campaign plans to ask for a partial recount on Monday.