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Sen. Bernie Sanders proclaimed victory in the Iowa caucuses from his New Hampshire headquarters moments after Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez demanded a recanvass, or re-tabulation, of the results.
Almost four days after the caucuses took place on February 3, the Iowa Democratic Party still has not declared an official winner with 97% of the precincts reporting as of 2 p.m. Central Time due to a series of breakdowns in the reporting process and unexplained inconsistencies and errors in the results .
Because caucuses conduct two rounds of preference expression, or alignments, to determine which candidates are viable to receive delegates, the Iowa Democratic Party reported three sets of results: the initial votes from the first alignment for all the precincts, the results from the second alignment, and the estimated state delegate equivalents (SDEs) calculated from the results of the second alignment.
The results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses from 97% of precincts showed Sanders and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg neck and neck in the total vote count from the second alignment and statistically tied in SDEs.
Currently, Sanders leads the statewide popular vote by 5,954 votes on the first alignment and 2,518 votes from the second alignment over Buttigieg, who holds 550 SDEs compared to 547 for Sanders.
In his press conference, Sanders argued that even though results from 3% of precincts are still missing, he is the rightful winner of Iowa by virtue of leading Buttigieg in sheer votes on both the first and second alignments.
Perez's calls for a re-canvass, or re-calculation, of the results came after The New York Times published a detailed and troubling analysis showing that "more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses" on Thursday morning.
Due to a number of factors including the catastrophic failure of a mobile app designed to submit precinct results, inconsistent calculations of final results, and jammed phone lines causing hours-long holds, precinct captains were initially unable to properly send the final data to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters, delaying the final release of the results.
The party held off on releasing any of the results until they were confident they had it right, a process now taking place over several days of resolving numerous issues with the caucus results that could sway the final tally.
Even after the initial fiasco with the reporting, the Iowa Democratic Party has continued to release false and error-ridden data, casting doubt on the authenticity of the results in such a tight race.
On Wednesday, the party had to correct a batch of data they released incorrectly showing some candidates winning votes and state delegate equivalents where they had not.
Shortly after Perez's tweets, the Iowa Democratic Party released a statement saying they have "taken unprecedented steps to gather redundant reports to ensure accuracy of all underlying data," and stating they would not conduct a re-canvass of the results unless a specific candidate formally requests one through the proper channels.
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