The Iowa caucus was a disaster for Democrats, or was it?
The caucuses were held Monday night, yet we still don’t know who officially won. South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has held the lead since partial results were released days ago following an alleged error in the reporting app Democrats used to collect results. But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been closing the gap, and currently sits just 0.2% behind Buttigieg.
The latest Emerson College tracking poll, however, shows Buttigieg has gotten a large bump in support thanks to his surprise success in Iowa. The delay in reporting the results of the Iowa caucuses has led some to speculate that the entire debacle was a calculated move by the Democratic National Committee to let Buttigieg soak up the spotlight ahead of New Hampshire.
After partial results were released Monday night, Buttigieg declared a victory of sorts, telling supporters “an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.”
“We don’t know all the results,” Buttigieg continued. “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.”
On Tuesday, Buttigieg only slightly walked back his “victory” comments the night before.
“We were looking at the internal numbers that we had and beginning to realize that something extraordinary had happened last night,” he told MSNBC host Willie Geist. “Here you have a campaign that was really questioned when we got in for whether we even oughta be here, whether we belonged in this race. And to not only establish that, but to reach the position that we did was a clear victory for our campaign.”
Emerson’s tracking poll collects data each night. As of Thursday morning, Buttigieg sits in second place among Democratic hopefuls with 21% of the vote, while Sanders leads with 31%. But since the Iowa caucus Monday night, Buttigieg has seen a 9-point bump in the poll, up from 12% on Monday.
This factoid was pointed out on Twitter, leading journalist Abby Martin to speculate that “A false 48 hour news cycle and cynical DNC manipulation let Pete rob Bernie’s thunder, a terrible omen of things to come.”
Professor Nick Flor, who teaches programming and other technology classes, pointed out that the DNC’s claims of an app issue seemed suspect, considering that if “you have all the data like they claimed, then ‘back-end coding problems’ can be solved with a simple SQL query.”
Buttigieg is also doing better in the WBZ/Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll, Boston’s local CBS affiliate reported. In that poll, Sanders still leads with 25% of the poll, but Buttigieg takes second place with 19%, “his best yet” in the poll, CBS reported.
The Iowa caucuses don’t really do much for providing candidates with delegates to win the eventual nomination, but because it is the first contest in the primary, it does allow the winner to use their momentum going forward. Buttigieg has capitalized on this even if he hasn’t officially won, while most other candidates simply said something to the effect of not having all the results and moving on to New Hampshire.