Sorry friends, but this last development is too much to attribute everything to incompetence. They're not rigging the actual election here - but they are rigging the news cycle. This will hurt Sanders' boost in the polls and on ActBlue, and it gives Buttiegig an opportunity to swipe up voters before they have a chance to commit to the actual leading candidate.

2/4/2020 5:34:40 PM

Yea not sure why you posted that twice but I would think most would agree. I thought the tone of my post when that was announced leaned that way but I certainly wasn't explicit. And maybe I'm being narcissistic and you were pointing to someone else, or more generally.

The active choice too release incomplete is obviously a political act, one way or another, and much more clearly so then the "choice" to massively fuck up an app and rollout.

2/4/2020 5:42:44 PM

From nate cohn the NYT election guy

Quote :

"As a general proposition, the media organizations aren't usually able to project even fairly competitive races with ~62% counted. If it's extremely representative, maybe in a 4 pt race. "

Also

Quote :

"NYT precinct result map now has data. Just eye balling it, doesn't seem like either candidate would have an obvious edge in what's left https://t.co/JhvCqvArQn Black Hawk County could be a possible exception on the Bernie side"

[Edited on February 4, 2020 at 5:57 PM. Reason : More, take the source into account if you please ]

2/4/2020 5:54:07 PM

Idiots
Out
Wandering
Around

2/4/2020 6:06:07 PM

wonder if resident Iowan TWWer Big4Country was there

2/4/2020 6:29:46 PM

Npr on the way home had two different Iowa stories and neither named Pete as the "leader", the both just said "too close to call" or something, which is what they would have said anyway. With NYT guy also being calm (it haven't checked their website), hopefully cnn and msnbc are as honest with their coverage but that's prob asking alot.

2/4/2020 6:48:11 PM

The most interesting distinction, which just hasn’t been analyzed well IMO, is how Buttigieg ran so far ahead of Biden and why that bucked so many polls (did it, I don’t follow the polling news cycle closely?).

There are some differences between them, but ehh, they are basically competing for a similar electorate.

Quite a few explanations like Ukraine/burisma (sad!), or Age (understandable, cuz Biden be frail), or the absolute disgust the average person feels about Biden’s primary message of “derp, I can work with Republicans” leading into Iowa. Buttigieg may have said similiar things before, but that wasn’t one of his leading arguments like it was for Biden. That message is a god damn fail, no one thinks that’s a possibility.

[Edited on February 4, 2020 at 8:09 PM. Reason : ......I’m actually going to consider this a small win for the country as a whole]

2/4/2020 8:02:33 PM

Quote :

"Iowa delegate estimate via NYT: Buttigieg 13 Sanders 13 Warren 10 Biden 4 Klobuchar 1"

2/4/2020 9:00:51 PM

^ in effect a 3-way draw

Which is probably fair and is the danger with this many candidates. It's ridiculous to claim victory in a contest where you get 27%, be it Buttigieg or Sanders in the end.

[Edited on February 4, 2020 at 10:29 PM. Reason : .]

2/4/2020 10:27:49 PM

^^^
You have to keep in mind the ads they see in Iowa aren’t what we see here.

He could have just run a better campaign. Based on the video of the woman who didn’t know he was gay im guessing he played up his christianity big time with them.

2/4/2020 10:30:21 PM

Quote :

"Echoing what dtownral said earlier, it's interesting that electoral mishaps in the US are always deemed a result of incompetence, but electoral mishaps anywhere else are deemed a result of corruption and rigging."

It has very little to do with what is happening and everything to do with who is doing it. Americans believing or not believing anything literally comes down to one question?

Does it help me or my agenda right now?

If the answer is yes, then its fine. If the answer is no, then its A THREAT TO EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE

Republicans probably do it more but this is proof everyone does it. The same people who have ridiculed the electoral college for 20 years talking about how bush and trump "actually lost" are now subscribing to the idea mayor Pete is "leading in iowa". People have been looking through that lens for so long that their eyes have adjusted and now they can't see anything else without it. Its why we are toast as a country.

2/4/2020 11:39:39 PM

Current delegate count @ 71% reporting:

Pete Buttigieg - 10 Delegates (419 Count, 26.8%)
Bernie Sanders - 10 Delegates (394 Count, 25.2%)
Elizabeth Warren - 4 Delegates (287 Count, 18.4%)

2/5/2020 8:21:51 AM

I don't understand how any of your can consider this any kind of "win." No Democrats won Iowa. Only Trump did. He won a lot of prizes.

He won a massive Democrat fuckup the same week they fail to convict him. Don't look like they have their game together, do it?

He won a lifetime's supply of mistrust and conspiracy theories between supporters of different Democratic candidates. It took these about fifteen minutes to show up in this thread.

He won another round of Democrats sniping each other while he ruled over a Republican party that is effectively in lock step behind him.

He also literally won Iowa. It probably wasn't going to be contested on the general anyway, but now there's -zero- chance of high Democratic turnout.

Speaking of turnout, he also won the prize of dispiriting Democrats all over with low participation figures.

I know you're all glad that Biden performed poorly but I don't think that's worth half of all the hits the Democrats took this week, even if it does cost him the nomination - and there's zero guarantee it will.

2/5/2020 9:01:31 AM

Have you even read these last two page? Who is that post addressing?

2/5/2020 9:03:35 AM

Quote :

"Republicans probably do it more but this is proof everyone does it. The same people who have ridiculed the electoral college for 20 years talking about how bush and trump "actually lost" are now subscribing to the idea mayor Pete is "leading in iowa". People have been looking through that lens for so long that their eyes have adjusted and now they can't see anything else without it. Its why we are toast as a country."

I don't think it's fraud. It's just incompetence. One of my huge complaints about modern society is you have people that will either see a problem or get notified of a problem, but will not lift a finger to fix it. What sent me on this revelation was I got notified of an error in my health insurance for my wife (said she had other insurance, she'd been switched over in 2019, call, work it out with them, 2 months later get the exact same letter).

You want to apply this to election infrastructure? Okay, everyone knows the voter lists are horribly inaccurate. If you move, you die, change primary place of residence, the voter list does not necessarily get updated. When California has an election it takes them 2 months to even approach a final count because they're busy counting and organizing all the people that voted in the wrong precinct. Yet any move to making the voter lists accurate is instantly met with opposition. Butterfly ballots in Florida and hanging chads. They only got switched out and the system changed when it became an election issue. In December I got a letter from city government for the previous home owner...who had not lived there since 2016. I put the letter back in the mailbox and wrote on it: "Return to Sender. Has not Lived Here since 2016. The Government should Know This."

Neither party believes in improving or making "infrastructure" of any kind work better or more efficient, because it's not a vote getter with the public. What happened in Iowa is a pretty easy one to see: the Democratic National Committee (due to Sanders supporters) passed down new requirements to Iowa that made their process more complicated. No money was earmarked from the DNC to the Iowa Democratic Party in this process to pay for it. The Iowa Democratic Party are probably cash-strapped because political parties in this country have become so incredibly weak the past couple decades and the Iowa Democrats have declined in the state, so they had an app designed that was probably on the cheaper side and did not have any robustness testing for it.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 9:25 AM. Reason : /]

2/5/2020 9:22:52 AM

Quote :

"I don't understand how any of your can consider this any kind of "win." No Democrats won Iowa. Only Trump did. He won a lot of prizes."

Bill Weld got 1 delegate out of the 40.

My winners of Iowa are:

Michael Bloomberg.
Donald Trump.
The New Hampshire Primary.
People in the Democratic and Republican parties that want the Iowa Caucuses to disappear.

Quote :

"He won a massive Democrat fuckup the same week they fail to convict him. Don't look like they have their game together, do it? He won a lifetime's supply of mistrust and conspiracy theories between supporters of different Democratic candidates. It took these about fifteen minutes to show up in this thread."

Saw yesterday he just his peak approval rating for his presidency. 49% admittedly, but still. Good job Pelosi. The Democrats I have to think never thought impeachment had a real chance at conviction. They'd be foolish in my opinion if they did, but if they did, they rushed through it as opposed to actually letting it go on awhile and collecting all the evidence they could, compelling witnesses to testify by finding them in Contempt of Congress, etc. If they just waited a month they could've gotten the testimony of Lev Parnas and the release of John Bolton's book.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 9:35 AM. Reason : .]

2/5/2020 9:29:43 AM

^^^As a matter of fact, I have read them.

Quote :

"I’m actually going to consider this a small win for the country as a whole"

-TerdFerguson

Quote :

"i'm about as happy as can be from Iowa. It looks like Bernie is 1 or 2 and Biden did poorly, and things are so bad it might blow up the Iowa caucus and people can ignore it next year. sounds like a win-win-win to me"

-dtownral

2/5/2020 9:35:00 AM

Ah true. My bad.

2/5/2020 9:36:42 AM

I find it fascinating how much the GOP wants the nominee to be Bernie. Much like the Clinton “pied piper” thing, be careful what you wish for.

(Also, I would implore Bernie fans to not signal boost GOP disinformation. Please, please fact check before boosting).

^^ I mean what’s wrong with the second one? Obviously if you are a Bernie fan you’d want a more resounding win but aside from that having him perform at expectations and Biden well below is exactly what you’d want. We all understand caucuses suck and this in particular was a shitshow but there will always be perceived winners and losers.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 9:54 AM. Reason : X]

2/5/2020 9:52:22 AM

I just posted a whole thing about why the electoral outcomes of the caucus were massively outweighed by the consequences of the screw-up. That goes double for Bernie Bros who have somehow convinced themselves that a (widely expected) second place showing is somehow a shattering victory. Even if your guy had won, the Democrats in general would be divided, throwing around conspiracies, and generally looking like disorganised fuckwits while Trump gets to preen in multiple spotlights.

2/5/2020 10:28:59 AM

I think the memory of the iowa debacle will fade very quickly. There's going to be plenty more primaries that go well. Other than the fact that Biden did very poorly, thankfully, nothing else that happened with these caucuses matter.

I am skeptical about buttigieg being the nominee though, i think he has consistently been weak against Trump and will struggle to gain traction in the right parts of the country to counter trump's populist electoral strategy.

2/5/2020 10:33:43 AM

Quote :

"That goes double for Bernie Bros who have somehow convinced themselves that a (widely expected) second place showing is somehow a shattering victory. "

Sounds like you're only reading Iowa in the context of a general election instead of the Dem primary. A second place showing actually is good for Sanders and the BERNIE BROS should be excited that Biden looks likely to fall back significantly after eating complete shit. Worst case scenario was Warren building some momentum or Biden to strengthen his front-runner lead. A non-viable long-term candidate winning a handful of delegates and getting a minor bump in early states does nothing to negate Sanders' chances

whether it hurts the eventual nomineee in the general election vs. Trump is another story but the news cycle moves so fast I cannot imagine this will matter to a single person in a few months

2/5/2020 10:48:10 AM

Democrats lost 2016 because they suppressed an insurgent uprising in their party. Republicans won because they failed to. Iowa shenanigans aside, it remains to be seen if Dems have learned anything. I'm absolutely positive that if they screw Bernie again, even less of his supporters will vote Dem than in 2016. And it will be the fault of party leaders.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 11:03 AM. Reason : .]

2/5/2020 11:01:58 AM

Grumpy thinks Iowa is more important than anyone else does

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 11:07 AM. Reason : By next Tues is, no one is going to give a shit that iowa results were delayed ]

2/5/2020 11:05:16 AM

Bernie also didn't get "second place" in any meaningful measure right? He won the popular vote and tied on pledged delegates.

(this is all based on the latest NYT projections, I suppose it could end up 14-12 Pete)

2/5/2020 11:11:04 AM

Can someone explain how NYT is projecting a final count when only 71% of votes have been counted?

2/5/2020 11:15:47 AM

Cause if you're not first, you're last.

2/5/2020 11:36:44 AM

^^

2/5/2020 11:43:28 AM

holy facepalm

2/5/2020 11:46:43 AM

caucuses are rigged to keep bernie out oh no!1!!

2/5/2020 12:00:06 PM

Quote :

"Democrats lost 2016 because they suppressed an insurgent uprising in their party. Republicans won because they failed to."

This is quite the leap of logic. Good job.

Quote :

"I am skeptical about buttigieg being the nominee though."

Three weeks ago I read a WaPo story analyzing an African-Americans only poll with Buttigieg the focus. After reading it, I concluded he has zero chance of winning the nomination. It goes beyond they just don't support him in the primary. Yang had more support among black voters. His general election support in this poll in a hypothetical matchup vs. Trump was 57-4, but the next lowest number for a Democrat WaPo listed was Warren at 71%. If your candidacy has zero support from African-Americans, how can you possibly do well in any Southern Democratic primary where they are a significant number of the electorate? Going back to 2016, I think it's pretty clear Sanders won the white vote for the Democrats. He got trounced however in the blacks and Latinos. How can you win a Democratic primary at this point in time if you can't get the support of black or Latino voters (who by the way are on average a lot less liberal than Democratic white voters).

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 12:15 PM. Reason : /]

2/5/2020 12:03:45 PM

GrumpyGOP

-I don’t think the vote counting screw up will be all that big of a deal going forward. The fact that they had a paper backup, and the end result will just be a delay in reporting is a reasonable outcome. If it hastens the death of caucuses then the entire fiasco was a net good.

-the conspiracy theories suck, but I also think the constant stream of bullshit is fatiguing a lot of people, they’re returning to more legit sources, and skepticism is a muscle that needs to be trained to function well. We haven’t even begun to hit peak conspiracy (the General is gonna be a shit show, guaranteed) yet Ive already had a couple conspiracy-curious friends rant about how fed up they are with this shit (admittedly anecdotal evidence, but I think people are actually getting wiser and more savvy to misinformation).

-Dems sniping at each other during a contested primary is always a given. It’s what the primary is for.

-the turnout numbers actually are a concern for me and something I’ll be watching much closer going forward. I’m hoping that was Iowa specific and doesn’t become a trend.

2/5/2020 12:11:54 PM

^^ exactly right about buttigieg (and klobuchar has similar dynamics). A big part imo of why Sanders lost in 2016 was because he lost momentum on super tuesday because clinton had such a stronger position at the time with minorities in the southern states especially. 4 years later, he's one of the candidates with the most support.

2/5/2020 12:24:27 PM

Why are you nervous about the lack of turnout at the caucus? Lack of turnout in primaries = lack of turnout in general?

2/5/2020 12:24:49 PM

Potentially? Everyone I talk to claims they are ready to get to work to unseat Trump, and then apparently in iowa people couldn’t be bothered to show up to the caucus? Is that too heavy of a lift for them? I’m hoping it’s a one off.

2/5/2020 12:39:39 PM

A portion of that is due to the simple fact that Trump wasn't on the ballot. A lot of people don't care what happens or who wins, they just want to vote against Trump. Those people stay home for the primary but will show up to the general.

Interestingly, I think theres also a lot of republicans like that who sat out of the midterms because Trump wasn't on the ballot but will show up in 2020 to vote for Trump.

A lot of people don't even really know what a primary is or how it works. I saw a lot of "but the election isn't until November" posts on FB.

2/5/2020 12:51:38 PM

Quote :

"Can someone explain how NYT is projecting a final count when only 71% of votes have been counted?"

Maybe I should have said prediction forecast instead of projection? They aren't "calling" the race, but making a prediction the same way they ever would. They see votes counted vs votes left, compare to historical data and polling, and make a statistical projection. I think they say there is still a 20% chance that Bernie gets more delegates.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing all this, just go their Iowa caucus page and see, it's spelled out.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 1:20 PM. Reason : Website says "forecast" so let's go with that wording]

2/5/2020 1:08:02 PM

Quote :

"then apparently in iowa people couldn’t be bothered to show up to the caucus?"

Well 1)a caucus takes far more time in a far more specific window then a GE or normal primary. But also 2) I read some analysis that the large field helps to suppress turnout bc there are still undecideds, and undecideds are less likely to vote, but that could be bs not sure.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 1:12 PM. Reason : E]

2/5/2020 1:12:14 PM

Re caucus turnout, this is what Kos said as the bookend point to his reaction:

Quote :

"11) For all the talk about Sanders reshaping the electorate, it’s just not happening. If he eventually gets 25%, which seems about right, he will have lost half his support from 2016, without managing to increase the number of caucus-goers. Fact is, only Barack Obama has managed to “reshape the electorate” in recent history, and we have no one of his caliber on the line. Michelle Obama would’ve done it. Hard to see anyone else. And that’s tragic, because Obama made everything so much easier."

Yes. The answer this country needs for our democracy is to emulate Argentina so the husband can get a 3rd term.

I saw one statistical analysis of the published Sanders results from the 62% reported number, and it was pretty uniformly 50% of his 2016 numbers for him across all precincts. (This is not to say Sanders' performance was weak necessarily, it's a much larger field after all. But half the people that supported him in 2016 vs. Clinton were with someone else Monday night.)

Quote :

"A lot of people don't even really know what a primary is or how it works. I saw a lot of "but the election isn't until November" posts on FB."

There are so many people that just check out on politics. I realized it when my wife became the expert to her friends on what impeachment was in December and how it works after I talked to her about it for 5 minutes. Impeachment you would think would be a big deal that should reach people, even the political agnostics.

We've become a society that doesn't watch the local news at 6 or the national news at 6:30 anymore, but unless you're a person that religiously watches an increasingly editorialized cable news or gets inside a message board or Twitter bubble on it, you really have no exposure to what is going on.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 2:37 PM. Reason : /]

2/5/2020 2:27:12 PM

Anyone who read Michelle's autobiography can see that she has no desire to run for president.

2/5/2020 2:49:02 PM

I agree with most of what GrumpyGOP wrote, except he's forgetting one winner: Mayor Pete.

He's definitely not a viable candidate down the road, but if he ends up winning in Iowa, it's because he used a strategy that worked. The Iowa Caucuses aren't a popularity contest, just like the presidential election isn't determined by popular vote. I don't care much for the guy and his smugness, but he did go around the state holding town halls and won in places he likely wouldn't have otherwise. The primaries are about picking up delegates, so he played the game pretty well, regardless if he winds up in second, or not.

2/5/2020 4:02:57 PM

https://twitter.com/lib_crusher/status/1225167351617712128?s=21

https://twitter.com/iowademocrats/status/1225170253778444291?s=21

Cool

2/5/2020 5:12:37 PM

I was just coming on here to post that. We have now confirmed that they changed votes during the delay. I'm sure its because of incompetence and just a coincidence that all of these mistakes just happen to hurt bernie's position. I'm also sure this isolated and only happened in the one place where it was immediately called out. Also just a coincidence that they hid the reveal behind the historical acquittal so no one would notice.


[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 5:20 PM. Reason : look at trump! he's the one trying to steal an election. nothing to see here]

2/5/2020 5:18:27 PM

Bernie’s campaign manager retweeted this as well

https://twitter.com/sethyefrican/status/1224982241740091392?s=21

2/5/2020 5:25:19 PM

I think the minor update and ^ are the same issue. Also happened with Bloomberg to buttigieg in another district if you scroll down on that tweet thread.

2/5/2020 5:38:10 PM

Yeah just showing that it's more widespread than one precinct. Interesting that it hurt Bernie and Warren and helped Buttiegig.

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 5:44 PM. Reason : .]

2/5/2020 5:44:05 PM

Remember, it’s very important to ignore Bernie’s online supporters and vote for him based on policy.

(In other words, don’t hold earl-types against him)

2/5/2020 5:46:03 PM

Lol go fuck yourself dude.

If no one commented on these irregularities, they would never have been fixed in the first place.

2/5/2020 5:49:19 PM

^^^I was talking about the patrick/Steyer to warren/Sanders thing, not the delaying releasing precinct data or whatever.
The former was one instance each for Warren, Sanders and pete right?

^the first person I saw comment on it is the NYT election guy

[Edited on February 5, 2020 at 5:51 PM. Reason : E]

2/5/2020 5:51:11 PM

Guys like Earl simply don’t help him. At all.

We are all extremely online so it probably doesn’t matter as this is an unrepresentative bubble and I’m voting for him regardless but you have to understand how similar a guy like Earl sounds to Trumpists.

2/5/2020 5:52:42 PM