NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Monday, February 3rd, 2020

As we wait for 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus results, here’s what we know so far

The first nom­i­nat­ing event in the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial con­test is offi­cial­ly under­way. Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers and activists in the Hawk­eye State are meet­ing in school gym­na­si­ums and cafe­te­rias to express their sup­port for a bevy of pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, from Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden to Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Pete Buttigieg to Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang.

The Iowa Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has still not yet released any offi­cial results (to the annoy­ance of the mass media), but social media is full of unof­fi­cial reports from jour­nal­ists and par­tic­i­pants report­ing on their expe­ri­ence at their cau­cus site.

Here are some of the unof­fi­cial reports we’ve seen:

And here’s a snip­pet from the Des Moines Reg­is­ter’s live update chronol­o­gy:

When an Iowa cau­cus del­e­gate count gets too close to call — get a coin. That’s what hap­pened at a rur­al precinct in Iowa Falls on Mon­day evening dur­ing a tight cau­cus count between Sen­a­tors Amy Klobuchar and Eliz­a­beth Warren.

Six­ty-two peo­ple were in atten­dance, accord­ing to Sara Bara­nows­ki, edi­tor of the Iowa Falls Times-Cit­i­zen. The via­bil­i­ty thresh­old to obtain del­e­gates in that loca­tion was 10.

Klobuchar of Min­neso­ta took an ear­ly lead with 19 sup­port­ers as her rivals strug­gled to keep pace. But War­ren of Mass­a­chu­setts was able col­lect 19 sup­port­ers of her own.

Klobuchar won the coin toss to win four del­e­gates, while War­ren got three, along with for­mer South Bend, Indi­ana, May­or Pete Buttigieg — despite him hav­ing five few­er sup­port­ers. For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden earned the remain­ing two.

Anoth­er coin toss was nec­es­sary for a del­e­gate in Ocheyedan. Klobuchar was again a win­ner. Although Pete Buttigieg edged out Klobuchar in a third coin toss.

- Phillip Bailey

Once the Iowa Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty gets its act togeth­er and starts releas­ing num­bers, we will update this post with our assess­ment of the results.

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation


    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: