What Did — And Didn’t — Go Down In The Iowa Caucuses

We have numbers! With 62 percent reporting, the first alignment vote is Sanders 24 percent, Buttigieg 21 percent, Warren 19 percent, Biden 15 percent and Klobuchar 13 percent. The post-alignment vote is Sanders 26 percent, Buttigieg 25 percent, Warren 21 percent, Biden 13 percent, Klobuchar 12 percent. The state delegate equivalent distribution is Buttigieg 27 percent, Sanders 25 percent, Warren 18 percent, Biden 16 percent, Klobuchar 13 percent. Again, this is with only about three-fifths of the vote reporting. In effect, we’ve dropped into where we would have been around 10 p.m. on a normal caucus night. We will update as more of the vote trickles in!

Watching CNN, I suppose I didn’t realize how much they’d lean in to state delegate equivalents as opposed to the other metrics. I don’t necessarily think it deserves to be put on a pedestal.

It’s kind of amazing to me that the numbers shifted that much. At the precinct I was observing, the Yang/Buttigieg supporters were the biggest nonviable groups, and they basically refused to leave their corners, which meant the two viable groups (Warren/Sanders) didn’t grow that much. But clearly that’s not what was happening in other precincts, at least according to this partial data.