Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Come on, man.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

We won’t go back.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / More Iowa Caucus Open Thread (with DMR Results Link)

More Iowa Caucus Open Thread (with DMR Results Link)

by | 123 Comments

This post is in: ,

Actual Iowa voter:


Right now, there are a total of *no* results on the DMRegister‘s tidy results page.

The NYTimes has any amount of breathless explanations of its elaborate ‘four needle’ wall-to-wall predictions coverage, where they are hoping bigly that Trump’s preferred opponent will sweep.

I’m gonna stay with the DMRegister, and I suggest y’all do the same.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  1. 1.

    Another Scott

    Michael Bennet is in the lead with 0%

    That was unexpected!!

    Seriously, I’m surprised at some of the gnashing of teeth downstairs….

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  2. 2.

    dr. bloor

    Here’s my explainer about how there are actually 3 DIFFERENT WAYS TO COUNT THE VOTE IN IOWA and why you should care about this.

    Actually, “3 DIFFERENT WAYS TO COUNT THE VOTE” is a pretty compelling argument for not giving a flying fuck about the results. When did Nate become a clickbaiting doink?

  3. 3.

    Juice Box

    I’m playing the nightly game of fetch and tug with the puppy. It’s substantially more interesting than MSNBC.

  4. 4.

    Marcopolo

    Fuckin disarrayed Dems!

    The R’s have already picked their winner in their caucus tonight…

    /s

    Had a lovely 2 hours writing GOTV postcards w/ my local Indivisible group. Anecdotally speaking, I’m a little worried by the Bloomberg curious comments from several of them. I basically suggested they spend more time looking into his record, but it’s a good reminder that waves of TV advertising/propaganda work on most people.

  5. 5.

    Nelle

    Just home from my first Iowa caucus.  On the first round, Amy had the most votes, followed by Pete, then Biden.  Warren just missed the 15% required for viability.  The second round, when all whose candidates were not viable could realign, saw a surge over to Warren, who was then also declared viable.  Sanders people mostly came over to Warren,

  6. 6.

    dr. bloor

    Those Republican results look like a big fat intervention for Weld and Walsh re: the true nature of the party they think they belong to.

  12. 12.

    Marcopolo

    @Nelle:So I read that one rule change they made this year is having an impact: the writer said after a candidate’s group hit viability that those people were locked into that group (which was not the case before); that if the group of undecided voters in a caucus was viable that those voters were locked into that undecided group. Apparently this means there is a lot less movement after the first vote (and less strategic moving around). The idea behind this change was twofold: speed things up & make sure the votes of folks who can’t stay for hours get counted. Also, some reporting is also saying that there seems to be less rhyme or reason to how folks are choosing to re-align from non-viable caucuses?

    You were on the ground, did you notice any of this at your site?

  14. 14.

    Kent

    @Immanentize: How do they do it?  Someone from Iowa here want to explain?  After the first round does the candidate with the lowest number of voters get to re-align and then they count again, and then the new lowest that is non-viable redistributes and they count again and keep doing it until all that are left is only viable candidates?

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ken: From Joe Walsh’s campaign manager:

  16. 16.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: He really should have brushed up on his English or brought an interpreter before going on site for that assignment.

  17. 17.

    Percysowner

    @Kent: Here’s Nate Silver’s explanation

    Iowa’s process doesn’t stop there, however. Voters in candidate groups that fail to meet a viability threshold in the first alignment — typically 15 percent of the vote, but it can be higher in smaller precincts — have one of three choices:

    • They can join a viable group.
    • They can try to combine with voters in other nonviable groups to achieve viability. For example, if the Warren group initially has 14 percent of the vote, it’s not necessarily dead in the water. Rather, it could recruit a few Tom Steyer voters, or a Michael Bennet supporter, etc., to get to 15 percent. It can’t recruit voters from groups that already achieved viability, however. Once a group is viable, it can continue to add new voters and grow larger, but it can’t lose them.
    • Or they could just go home. Nothing forces them to participate in further rounds of caucusing.

     

  18. 18.

    Anne Laurie

    @dr. bloor: Those Republican results look like a big fat intervention for Weld and Walsh re: the true nature of the party they think they belong to.

    Can’t speak for Walsh, but Weld is strictly in it as a protest candidate.  He *was* one of that vanished breed, an Honorable New England Republican.   He finds Trump personally insulting.

    (Yeah, I have a soft spot for the guy.  I did vote for him back in the day — the alternative was John Silber, a misogynist nutbag, and MA is a ‘weak governor’ state where the legislature controls everything worth controlling.  )

    (And since our Pagan wedding officiant required special certification, I have a congratulatory letter signed by Weld to go with our official marriage license.)

  20. 20.

    Barbara

    @Kent: This is how we have done some local primary elections.  You just keep eliminating candidates and redistributing votes until someone has 50% +1. You rank each candidate when you vote, so no realignment based on known results.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    OT:

    dylan matthews @dylanmatt

    I fear young people are under the false impression that the Trump years are zanier than the Bush years. The vice president shot a guy in the face, the president got a black eye and tried to convince us a pretzel did it, and a top advisor resigned bc of his shoplifting problem

    Who was the shoplifter? I bet there was a time I knew the name and could identify a picture of that person, but right now it’s not ringing any bells

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anne Laurie: I realize he probably didn’t move many votes, but I can’t get past his running for Veep on Johnson’s ticket, even if he did come out at the end and say “People, come on! You know you gotta vote for Clinton, right?”

  25. 25.

    Kay

    If I have to have a billionaire I like Steyer better than Bloomberg. IF I HAVE TO.

    You people better not do that to me.

  26. 26.

    Ohio Mom

    You do have to wonder what goes on in people’s minds as they caucus.

    Does anyone say to themselves something like,  “I hope she (neighbor, friend, co-worker, whatever) doesn’t hold it against me that I’m over here for this candidate.” Or, “Oh, he’s smart, I’ll do what he’s doing.” “She’s for that candidate? I always knew she was an idiot.”

    Such a weird idea, running around a room to agree on a candidate.

  29. 29.

    rp

    The bush years weren’t in the same ballpark of zaniness as trump. And the bush admin was really, really zany.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    You have to give some grudging respect for “our” billionaires, since the entire rest of their social class decided they like tax cuts more than…America. They’re really quite mavericky, if you think about it. The rest of these assholes sold us out in a heartbeat.

  39. 39.

    Eolirin

    @mrmoshpotato: That’s because these caucuses don’t actually select delegates to go to the national convention, they select delegates to go to another event that will select those delegates.

  42. 42.

    catclub

    @rp: And the bush admin was really, really zany.

     

    Zany.  Not the word i would pick. How about war crimes?

    Tell it to a million dead iraqis.

  46. 46.

    Kai-two

    The idea that there’s more than one way to determine the winner of Iowa was invented roughly three days ago and it deserves to be called out for the ratfucking it is. It’s designed to sow discord and create Dems In Disarray stories at the cost of the winner’s legitimacy.

    This right here.

    Saying there are multiple ways to count Iowa’s results is like saying there are 4 ways to count who won a football game based on the score at the end of each quarter.

    You have to be profoundly uninformed, stupid person (or the New York Times) to fall for this shit.

  47. 47.

    Marcopolo

    Quality control damnit!

    At this rate the “first in the nation” Iowa caucus is making a pretty good argument for this year being its last.

  48. 48.

    The Dangerman

    Tell them “get results or you have to watch the P&G Super Bowl commercial” on an endless loop (Sophia Vergara, Rob Riggle, and a cast of … well, everyone … in some sort of peyote inspired stream of conscionsness related to spilled … chili, I guess).

    RR having paper towels come out of his groin area with the title of the commercial being “We all come together” is bizarre and could prove to be excellent torture. Or Pat Boone covers some metal standards on an endless loop. Cruel and most definitely unusual but I’m tired of waiting.

  50. 50.

    Another Scott

    @Nelle: Thanks for your reports!

    It wasn’t clear from the early end of your comment at #5 how things turned out.  Who “won” the delegates there?

    Thanks again.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  51. 51.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Eolirin:

    That’s because these caucuses don’t actually select delegates to go to the national convention, they select delegates to go to another event that will select those delegates. 

    To quote Adam Sandler, “Fuck me in the goat ass!” That. is. ab. surd.

  52. 52.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    On topic:

    Peter Hamby @ PeterHamby
    literally ~90% of the news coverage right now is coming from DSM area precincts that are younger & higher-educated — and people are drawing wayyyy too many conclusions from that

  54. 54.

    Eolirin

    @mrmoshpotato: When they get to the state convention they’re allowed to change their vote after the first round. It’s a way to state that they’re not yet sure who should be the nominee but want to be able to have a voice in the final tally after getting to see where the rest of the state ends up. Really useful for strategic voting.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    off topic:

    Meredith Lee @ meredithlleev
    A former Bolton aide:

    Mark Groombridge @MarkGroombridge
    .@AmbJohnBolton, You’ve let down your country. I worked loyally for you for 15 years. Yes, the Senate was never going to convict, but you had the opportunity to provide them with the info so they could make a fully informed decision. Guess it was about book sales after all.

    I still say Bolton has a couple of arrows still in the quiver

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    Still nothing on the DR newspaper results page.  Looks like it’s going to be a long night.

    Fingers crossed that there’s a sensible outcome in the morning.

    ‘night everyone.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  57. 57.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: I love that the great patriot trumpista proudly declares we shouldn’t have a First Amendment, (“I think you shouldn’t be able to say that about the President of the United States!”) and she’s going to report him! to Don Jr!

  59. 59.

    Adam L Silverman

  60. 60.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah. I think we all need to be realistic about whether Pelosi’s plan was ever to get to 67 in the Senate or just do as much damage as possible prior to November. If the latter was as least part of her plan, then Bolton hasn’t even played his hand yet.

  61. 61.

    danielx

    @rp:

    If you go with craziness instead of zaniness…

    I held Bush in contempt and detestation and utterly loathed Cheney (and still do), but I never thought either one was out and out crazy and/or deranged.

    With Trump, there is no doubt whatsoever.

  62. 62.

    chris

    The 2012 Iowa caucuses were a ****show when Rick Santorum beat Mitt Romney, except it wasn't clear for days. The 2016 Clinton-Sanders photo finish was a mess. Looks like we're headed for 3 for 3. Not a good look.— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) February 4, 2020

  63. 63.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Alex Seitz-Wald @ aseitzwald18m 
    Just in: Our first official statement from the Iowa Democratic Party. The big news here is TURNOUT. They say it’s on pace for 2016, which is LOW. 172,000 turned out in then, down from the record-high of 240,000 in 2008.

  66. 66.

    Mike J

    @Eolirin:That’s because these caucuses don’t actually select delegates to go to the national convention, they select delegates to go to another event that will select those delegates

    This is the way WA caucuses worked too.  Washingtonians should be vigilant because while we got rid of caucuses, the state party still picks delegates, and they tend to like people who will boo John Lewis.

    If you live in Washington you NEED to go to your local LD meeting and tell them you do not want ratfuckers going to Milwaukee.

  67. 67.

    Mary G

    Official version: quality checks taking a long time.

    Just in: Our first official statement from the Iowa Democratic Party.The big news here is TURNOUT. They say it's on pace for 2016, which is LOW. 172,000 turned out in then, down from the record-high of 240,000 in 2008. pic.twitter.com/MXGBKO64gc— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) February 4, 2020

    Two tweets I saw, too lazy to find again. One, I think from WSJ, that app the Iowa Dems chose has crashed. Other from someone claiming to be in a charge of a precinct, says he’s been waiting on hold for over an hour to report results.

  68. 68.

    Eolirin

    @mrmoshpotato: Eh. Look, I would prefer primaries. I think they’re more democratic and think caucuses are a bit of an anachronism, but if you’re going to do them, it honestly makes a decent amount of sense to do it this way.

    The only thing that’s absurd is how much media attention is paid to them. They’re a tiny state and won’t have a material impact on the delegate counts, and those final delegate counts come in quite a bit later than the initial caucuses. They shouldn’t matter that much. The only reason they’re important is because the media insists they’re important and enough people buy it.

  69. 69.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Adam L Silverman: “I think you shouldn’t be able to say that about the President of the United States!”

    Wow.  I wish Ed had told her to move to Russia then.

    What a damn cult.

    ETA – I agree with Jim.  “I’m gonna tell my orange god emperor and his large failson on you!”

  72. 72.

    Marcopolo

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Strikes me that might be as much of a result of the electorate in IA shifting R since 08 as anything else. I know that is what has happened here in MO.  Our rural areas went from a ~35-40% D vote to a 20-25% D vote.

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the two 2018 R to D flipped IA house seats in a Presidential year when the turnout will be through the roof.

    Suppose an alternative explanation is it just gets progressively harder for folks to carve out time to caucus every new 4 year period.

  73. 73.

    Kraux Pas

    I hate the FTFNYT headline about confusion about the results. It’s called counting.

    Anything to promote fake drama.

  74. 74.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Marcopolo: probably also the excitement Obama/Clinton generated, and Obama had what I think was a legendary turn-out organization and buckets of money. Don’t know about Clinton.

    Anybody watching Klobuchar? Decent speech, I think.

  75. 75.

    Marcopolo

    @Mary G: Ah, the joys of using brand new tech in a real world situation.  In 2008 the Obama campaign had this great new phone app for designated poll watchers to use to ID supporters as the votes—ya know, so we knew whose house to go to to pull out folks who hadn’t yet.  Totally crashed on its first encounter with live real-time data. Don’t think it would have helped us make up a 4000 vote deficit statewide (McCain’s margin of victory here) but it was a great learning experience about relying on untested tech.

  77. 77.

    Mary G

    Welp, the media is going to bitch about Dems in disarray, cause it looks like they really are in Iowa:

    CNN was interviewing an Iowa precinct official when the Iowa Democratic Party took him off hold. He tried to end his interview politely, but Wolf pressed to listen in; by the time they had agreement on that, the state party had hung up on him.— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 4, 2020

    So now he has to call back and rejoin the queue to report his results.— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 4, 2020

    Here’s the video — you really have to hear the melancholy in “they hung up on me” pic.twitter.com/tEh74KmJVN— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 4, 2020

  80. 80.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Marcopolo:

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the two 2018 R to D flipped IA house seats in a Presidential year when the turnout will be through the roof.

    And I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take this time to point out that both of those Red-to-Blue flippers, people who won a general election, endorsed Biden
    Biden speaking, looks pretty good so far. I hope they told him to keep it short… oh, too late

  81. 81.

    janesays

    So… this is apparently a complete shitshow.

    The DNC really needs to give Iowa and New Hampshire an ultimatum – Iowa will no longer hold caucuses, and New Hampshire agrees to share the first in the nation status with them in 2024 and hold their primaries on the same day.

  86. 86.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    W.W. McClyde @ WWMcClyde
    You know who benefits from this clusterfuck? Joe Biden. Think about it. He can just shrug his shoulders and say, “look, that was a mess.”

    ETA: I don’t think Biden’s quite that ruthless, but if he’s smart, he’s hired a couple people who are

  88. 88.

    MisterForkbeard

    @danielx: Charitable explanation: Things are confused and they want to be sure they don’t have to recuse results later.

     

    Other explanation: They’re worried about hacking. I saw some speculation from the media about their app earlier, in which they said the app had actually been extensively tested and officials couldn’t figure out what was going wrong

  90. 90.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MisterForkbeard:  Rachel Maddow just read a statement from the party saying ‘it’s not a hack, not an intrusion… underlying data and paper trail are sound”

  91. 91.

    Jay

    Trump 's new @FEC disclosure shows his re-election campaign spending $1.4+ million on legal consulting & lawyer fees in the 4th quarter of 2019 alone—roughly $12.4 MILLION since @realDonaldTrump became President facing Mueller investigation, Stormy Daniels lawsuit, impeachment… pic.twitter.com/xWEsAoVRsQ— Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) February 1, 2020

    New @FEC filing: Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign paid $194,247.57 to Trump family members, properties & businesses in the final quarter of last year alone—steering over $1.8 MILLION in donations from presidential campaign donors to @realDonaldTrump's private interests. pic.twitter.com/ell9EtWkDH— Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) February 1, 2020

  92. 92.

    Mary G

    MORE: Polk County precinct chairs are being advised to take pictures of the results and text them over to the Polk County executive director, who is driving them to the HQ, according to a Democratic operative familiar with the situation— Elena Schneider (@ec_schneider) February 4, 2020

    Amy K. had a smart idea, she just went ahead and just gave a speech to her supporters as if she knew she’d done well.

  96. 96.

    Mary G

    On those technical difficulties…"We are on paper in many cases," not the app, as was planned, said one Iowa Democrat. "The whole system largely broke."— Elena Schneider (@ec_schneider) February 4, 2020

  97. 97.

    LeftCoastYankee

    Kudos to the IA Democratic Party to telling the media horse-race fuckers to get bent.  I had to laugh at Brian Williams being very disappointed….

    Limiting the premature speculation of national media on the glory of a Wang administration, is a good thing.

    Nate Silver’s take is wonky horseshit.  The changes in counts between rounds could matter if it was a more representative state.  In Iowa, the only metric which matters is final delegate count.

    Fucking breathe everyone, and let the process happen.  November is still 9 months away.

  99. 99.

    Martin

    @janesays: Yeah. Ban caucuses. Do ranked choice voting for all states in July. Make it the first Tuesday after the 4th. Convention a month later. We don’t need to spend a year on this.

  100. 100.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Mary G: I saw part of Amy’s speech – it was good! She made a good decision there.

    Also, texting the pictures isn’t…. terrible? But then someone is going to physically drive them over to HQ? That’s super weird.

  105. 105.

    Redshift

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Other explanation: They’re worried about hacking. I saw some speculation from the media about their app earlier, in which they said the app had actually been extensively tested and officials couldn’t figure out what was going wrong 

    Speaking as a software engineer with experience with things being extensively tested, there is no testing that compares to the massive hit this system is taking tonight. You can plan for capacity and do load testing, but it’s still not the same.

    For a recent example, take the launch of Disney+, which was a flagship service of giant corruption with a bazillion dollars, and it was still a huge cluster when signups launched.

  106. 106.

    Jinchi

    @Martin: Do ranked choice voting for all states in July. Make it the first Tuesday after the 4th.

    Love the idea. Heck we can still let Iowa and New Hampshire have their fun in February. The rest of us will have forgotten it all by summer.

  109. 109.

    Nelle

    @Another Scott: in our precinct,  there were 9 delegates for some other thingy (my husband is one of the Warren delegates).  Two each for Amy, Warren and Biden, three for Pete.  He and Amy tied for that last delegate and it was decided for Pete by a coin toss.  We’re still trying to understand the system.

  110. 110.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Redshift: I used to do professional QA for cloud apps. It’s definitely hard, but I’m surprised at the whole”complete failure” of the app.

    Usually in these cases it sorta works.

  111. 111.

    Mary G

    And for something completely different, a cool football player on the KC, MO Chiefs, Derick Nnadi:

    After the Kansas City Chiefs won on Sunday, this player made snow angels in the confetti, then paid off the adoption fees for more than 100 shelter dogs – which is probably one of the most wholesome Super Bowl celebrations of all time ❤️ https://t.co/kiN1UiRYD7 pic.twitter.com/hipp4imIU5— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 3, 2020

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @different-church-lady

    Story goes that filming on Gene Kelly’s singin’ in the rain scene ran so late that it slopped over into the hours shortly after people got home from work and enough toilets were being flushed to turn it into singin’ in the drips.

  117. 117.

    The Dangerman

    OK, how about if we give everyone in the caucus a kernel of corn, we place the kernels in jars, and then we weigh the thing. No fair popping or extra buttering.

  121. 121.

    janesays

    @Kraux Pas: I mean… the Iowa Democratic Party has provided no information, and the candidates are all giving victory speeches even though we have no idea who actually won.

    The only good thing that can come out of tonight is that hopefully this will be the last Iowa Caucus ever held. The DNC needs to tell them this shitshow is over. If they want to run caucuses again in 2024, they can do so – and they’ll get no votes at the convention.

  123. 123.

    Anne Laurie

    @Origuy: Bring it up to date, though. Have a different kind of smoke.

    Big electioneering opportunity in branded vape pens!

    (I’m so old, I can remember local pols handing out matchbooks, along with pencils & emery boards.)

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