Final Iowa Caucus Results Show Buttigieg & Sanders Virtually Tied, AP Says It Can’t Ever Declare Winner

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) both claimed victory after 100% of the Iowa caucus precincts results reported their results Thursday.

The Associated Press said it was unable to determine a winner due to discrepancies in the results, but it showed Buttigieg narrowly edging out Sanders, with 26.2% and 26.1% respectively. Both candidates received 11 delegates.

Buttigieg said it was “fantastic news to hear that we won” during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Thursday evening.

He added, “I want to say that Sen. Sanders had a great night too, and I want to congratulate him and his supporters.”

The Sanders campaign also claimed victory Thursday evening during a press conference.

“Tonight’s release of data by the Iowa Democratic Party confirms Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Iowa caucus,” Sanders’s campaign senior adviser, Jeff Weaver, said in a statement in Manchester.

“We also feel confident that the discrepancies we’re providing tonight, in addition to those widely identified in the national media, mean that the SDE count will never be known with any kind of certainty,” he continued. “Given the rules changes we fought for that required the release of the popular vote count, SDEs are now an antiquated and meaningless metric for deciding the winner of the Iowa caucus.”

SDEs are State Delegate Equivalents and are used as a proportional value of actual delegates. The percentage of SDEs won is how the final results are typically calculated.

In Iowa, there are 2107 total SDEs caucus night. Essentially if a candidate receives 10% in a precinct that awards 50 delegates, and 100 people showed up to that precinct that math would look like this: (10×50)/100, which would equal 5 SDEs.

According to the Iowa Democratic Party, Buttigieg received 564.012 SDEs and Sanders got 562.497 — a near tie.

The results also show Sen. Elizabeth Warren in third with 18% and former Vice President Joe Biden trailing in fourth with 15.8%. Warren gained five delegates and Biden received two.

The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, has called for a recanvass of the Iowa votes due to discrepancies and errors that were reported by the New York Times on Thursday.

“Enough is enough. In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass,” Perez tweeted Thursday evening.

An hour later he wrote: “A recanvass is a review of the worksheets from each caucus site to ensure accuracy. The IDP will continue to report results.”

Buttigieg said he would leave the decision to recanvass up to the democratic party.

“Whatever they need to do in order to make sure that the information is clear and verified,” Buttigieg said.

The results of the caucuses were delayed due to a system error with a new app used for reporting. Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price said the problems were not a result of a hack, but he did express concern that the results were not being fully reported.