Final Democratic caucus results show Klobuchar took Floyd County, Buttigieg took state

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

It took almost three days after the Iowa Democratic caucus was over for the final results to be released, and up to the last minute one of the missing precincts was from Floyd County.

It’s a situation that has the Floyd County Democratic Party chairman scratching his head and upset.

Early Thursday evening, the state party’s caucus results website still showed 97% — 1,711 out of 1,765 precincts reporting.

One of the 54 precincts that the party thought it was missing was Rockford/Ulster in Floyd County, and county party Chairman William Baresel just doesn’t understand that.

“I am upset and frustrated, bordering on furious at how the caucus is being compiled by the IDP,” said Baresel, referring to the Iowa Democratic Party.

“No one from the state party reported to me that they are having a problem with Rockford/Ulster,” he told the Press Thursday.

“In fact, I corrected over the last two days almost every precinct’s totals to reflect the numbers my volunteers took that night at least once. The only one that I thought was properly reported the first time on Monday night was Rockford/Ulster,” he said.

Baresel shared copies of the individual precinct reports with the Press, and said the actual papers had also been given to a state party representative who was driving around the state collecting them all on Tuesday.

The tally from Rockford/Ulster shows Joe Biden taking the most support in that precinct after the people attending that caucus split up into their final alignment with those “viable” candidates who had received at least 15% support in the first go-round.

Of the 37 people at that precinct, they ended up 13 for Biden, nine each for Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, and six for Pete Buttigieg.

That was enough to swing the county’s top preference from Buttigieg to Klobuchar.

Buttigieg had been one supporter ahead before the total county results were known, but fell to two supporters behind when Klobuchar’s Rockford/Ulster numbers were added.

In state delegate equivalents — a number that measures the support the candidates received Monday at the caucus, but also is affected by the number of delegates each precinct was able to award and the number of people who turned up at each precinct to participate — Buttigieg and Klobuchar ended up tied at 2.33 SDE’s each in Floyd County, with Joe Biden third with 2.22 SDE’s and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tied for fourth with 1.56 SDE.

By 8 p.m. the state party website was showing 100% of precincts reporting, and showed Pete Buttigieg with a small lead over Bernie Sanders in state delegate equivalents.

Sanders, campaigning in New Hampshire, said he had won the Iowa caucus because he had more people who supported him, even though Buttigieg ended up with slightly more SDE’s.

“This difference — no matter who inches ahead in the end — is meaningless because we are both likely to receive the same number of national delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee,” Sanders said in Manchester, New Hampshire, according to the Associated Press.

And, the final results might not be final. The head of the national Democratic Party has demanded the results be recanvassed, and some reports have pointed out potential errors in the count, meaning the results are likely to be disputed.

Floyd County Democratic Party Chairman Baresel said, “This whole process is angering. I asked volunteers to give up a minimum of eight hours to run these caucuses. Each volunteer took a four-hour training course and was at the caucus site for at least four hours.

“These volunteers then had to go into work the next day, knowing that the IDP can’t get their reporting together. They overly complicated a process that just needed phones, email and a spreadsheet,” he said.

“I thank the custodial staff, the community centers and schools for accommodating the caucus,” Baresel said. “I am sorry that a process that ran the same way it always does at the local level was such a disaster on the state level.”