Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his supporters were on the losing end of the Iowa caucus delegate count, according to the Iowa Democratic party’s “certified” results, released late Sunday night, but they’re not planning on letting it go.
Sanders’ campaign said Monday that they plan to demand a “partial recanvass” of some Iowa precincts after the New York Times and other outlets reported errors and “inconsistencies” that go beyond just a faulty vote tabulation app. Those errors, the campaign believes, may have unfairly awarded additional delegates to former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, the declared winner of the Iowa caucus.
Sanders, The Hill reports, won Iowa’s popular vote, narrowly edging out Buttigieg by 0.1%, but because Buttigieg did better in certain precincts with higher delegate counts, Buttigieg will come away from Iowa with 14 of the state’s delegates, while Sanders will come away with just 12.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) finished in third, giving her eight of the state’s convention delegates. Former Vice President Joe Biden finished in fourth, taking just six delegates.
“Totals released by the party on Sunday indicated that former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) would receive two more pledged delegates from the contest than did Sanders — 14 and 12, respectively. No other candidate won 10 or more delegates in the caucuses,” according to The Hill. “Some journalists, including The Appeal’s Daniel Nichanian, noted that even after Sunday’s update some of the delegate calculations remained incorrect, including one case where a precinct allocated more state delegates than it had to allocate.”
This is the second time that Sanders has run into problems with the Iowa caucus. In 2016, his campaign claimed victory over Hillary Clinton in the Iowa popular vote, but narrowly lost the delegate count to the former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator (ironically, of course, Hillary Clinton would go on to win the popular vote, but lose the 2016 presidential election to now-President Donald Trump).
The Sanders campaign has since moved on to New Hampshire, but the Vermont socialist’s top supporters — and even some of his top surrogates — are not about to let Iowa go, especially given this veritable repeat of 2016, and especially knowing that the Democratic National Committee seems committed to denying Sanders the nomination yet again over concerns he’s un-electable.
“We’re not dropping this,” filmmaker Michael Moore, who has been hitting the trail for Sanders in early primary states told a reporter from TIME Magazine Sunday night. “We the people who invested ourselves in this, we’re not going to let it go.”
The candidates, themselves, seem determined to move on, however. Sanders and Buttigieg traded potshots at appearances in New Hampshire over the weekend. Sanders knocked Buttigieg’s notorious “wine cave” fundraisers in Silicon Valley, claiming, despite his star-studded campaign events, that he lacks the support of “millionaires and billionaires.”
Buttigieg returned fire by claiming Sanders would explode the Federal budget and the deficit, and drive the nation deeper into debt.
Sanders is well ahead in the latest polls for New Hampshire, besting Buttigieg by between six and eight points in every tally. Buttigieg is trailing Sanders, but well ahead of the rest of the field, including Warren, Biden, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who is enjoying a slight bounce following Friday night’s debate.