Democratic Iowa Caucus results thread (entrance poll @8pm ET)

[jimrtex]

AP says Sanders is leading in Delegates (actual delegates) 19-18. Clinton still leads in precinct level delegates 568-557.

The 568-557 is the projected number of state delegates, based on the assumption that the county conventions will elect their state delegates in proportion to the county delegates chosen tonight. The county delegates are not bound, but presumably the delegates chosen tonight were vetted by the campaigns. I think the O'Malley and uncommitted will probably miss the thresholds, and won't actually elect any state delegates.

Most of the national delegates are actually allocated by congressional district (8, 8, 8, and 6), with 6 for the western CD. So a 5:3 split is at least a 56:44 majority (with rounding).

[jimrtex]

Are there exact precinct results available anywhere?  Or will there be?

https://www.idpcaucuses.com/#/state

Click on a county to get a precinct-level result map of that county.

It's just a percentage in each precinct.  This isn't the most useful, though I may be able to reverse engineer some results with some effort.

The precinct results are the percentages of delegates to the county convention.  You will notice that the percentages are the decimal equivalent of small integer ratios (eg 2/7 equal 28.6%). One problem is that a lot of precincts are 50%:50%, which means that they could be 1:1, 2:2, 3:3, ... etc. Somewhere there must be the number of delegates per precinct, but I haven't come across it.

The allocation is proportional to the Obama+Hatch results in the 2012 and 2014 elections. So you should be able to figure it out (the Iowa SOS does have precinct level results).

But the popular vote is much higher. For example, the Des Moines precinct that was shown on NPR had a popular vote count of 232:224, with 3 persons missing. But there were only 9 delegates awarded (5:4). So the precinct will be reported as 55.6% for Clinton, even though the popular vote was 50.9% Clinton.

2008 ratio of caucus attendees to state delegate

State delegates per county - 2016

Democratic results

It appears that the ratio of the Obama+Hatch popular vote to county delegates is not constant across counties.

For example:

Taylor 1789 Obama+Hatch :: 30 county delegates
Ringgold 1738 Obama+Hatch :: 80 county delegates
Decatur 2559 Obama+Hatch :: 70 county delegates

But for precincts within a county, the ratio of Obama+Hatch :: county delegates is a constant.

So for example in Taylor the quota is 1789/30 = 59.63

And by precinct:

Blockton 92/Q = 2 (rounded), Clinton 2, Sanders 0
Bedford 403/Q = 7, Clinton 5, Sanders 2
Clearfield 161/Q = 3, Clinton 3, Sanders 0
Gravity 127/Q = 2, Clinton 1, Sanders 1
Legion 183/Q = 3, Clinton 2, Sanders 1
Lenox 649/Q = 11, Clinton 7, Sanders 4
New Market 174/Q = 3, Clinton 2, Sanders 1

Total: 1789/Q = 30, Clinton 21, Sanders 9

Clinton is shown as receiving 70% of the vote in Taylor. That may be roughly correct, subject to rounding in each precinct, and assuming attendance per delegate was constant across precincts.

Taylor County will elect 2 delegates to the state convention. I think a 21:9 split will come out 1.4 : 0.6, and Sanders will get the favorable rounding, so that in the state totals, Taylor will be reported as 1 each.

A similar occurrence happens in Ringgold where a 53:27 Clinton majority at the county convention will produce a 1:1 split at the state convention.

But in Decatur. a 35:33:1:1 split may produce a 2:1 split at the state convention since Decatur has 3 state delegates (O'Malley and Uncommitted each have one county delegate). There could be some serious courting of those two delegates.

Since the highest number of attendees per state delegate has usually been in Johnson County (Iowa City and University of Iowa), I suspect that Sanders actually had a popular vote plurality. Likely not a majority since O'Malley was probably getting squeezed everywhere.

Because the size of the county convention varies, and is not proportional to the Obama+Hatch popular vote, it would be meaningless to produce statewide totals. I suspect that county conventions in larger counties are smaller in a relative sense. The Obama+Hatch popular vote in Polk was 116.44 x that in Ringgold. If the size of the county conventions was proportional, then Ringgold would have 80 county delegates, and Polk would 9300 county delegates.

Note that Polk does have 228 state delegates which is 114 x that of Ringgold.

[jimrtex]

AP says there are 1681 precincts, but Microsoft has it at 1683 precincts.

There are a couple of extra non-geographical caucuses for people who are out of state, particularly military. There is some sort of way to register to participate.

Since Microsoft is working with the parties, they may have taken that into account. The AP may just be set up to use conventional precincts.

[jimrtex]

lol at all the frustrated, delusional Bernie assholes trying to pretend Bernie beat expectations and never had a chance in Iowa.
CNN had Bernie up 9 in Iowa, and the polls have been MOE for the last month.
Just 12 hours ago these kids were saying Bernie was going to easily win because of the enthusiasm gap.  Now they hope we've all forgotten.  Steve McQueen remembers.

Nope, and it looks like she won just because she got lucky with coin flips.

"THE COINS WERE RIGGED!  CHECK THEM OUT - THEY HAD HEADS ON BOTH SIDES!!!"

How did the Sanders people want a dead-tie precinct to be decided?
If they just handed it to Sanders the count would be 695-693 Clinton.

That's ok.  Clinton people have a president.  Bernie people have a childish little sob story about how the election was stolen from them by a coin flip that they can annoy people with for the next few months.

Except the coin flips weren't deciding delegates to the state conventions, they were deciding delegates to county conventions.

The rural counties that I looked at had 10s of county delegates, who would choose two or three state delegates. It is quite improbable that a county delegate will change the distribution of the state delegates. In the more populous counties, the ratio of county delegates to state delegates will be lower, so a particularly propitious lucky coin flip may have changed a delegate.

[jimrtex]

At glance at the raw vote results indicates to me the Clinton most likely won the popular vote as well so I am not sure what Sanders is trying to do by pushing to release the raw vote count.  He is better off talking about the near tie in terms of delegates and all the coin tosses.

Popular vote is translated into county delegates on a precinct by precinct basis. The county delegates are then translated into state delegates. This is an estimate, and assumes that county delegates chosen by a group of Clinton supporters will support Clinton at the county convention.

In past caucuses, the ratio of popular vote to state delegates has been higher in more populous counties, and the highest has usually been in Johnson County (Iowa City and University of Iowa). And it is quite possible that the popular vote to county delegates is variable within a county.

A well-organized campaign would have someone at every precinct in the state, and would have reported the popular vote back to the party.

[jimrtex]

According to the link on uselectionatlas It seems the raw votes are

Clinton     69,631
Sanders   69,319
O'Malley       758

So Clinton wins by around 300 votes.

That's impossible, because the Iowa Democratic Party wrote in their press release that turnout was 171,109 voters.

The atlas link does seem to match the results at NY times site. on a county by county basis.

http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/primaries/iowa?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region&region=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region

The AP is not estimating the popular vote. It is projecting the number of state delegates (multiplied by 100).

For example in Taylor County, there were 30 delegates elected to the county convention, 21 for Clinton, and 9 for Sanders. The IDP shows Clinton with 70% of the "vote", which is 21/30. That is, she won 70% of the delegates to the county convention.

Taylor County elects 2 state delegates. AP and the Atlas show this as 200 units, and divides it as 140 60.

I don't know how the IDP estimates the state delegates. They could conceivably do it just like the AP and the Atlas, but not multiply by 100. So it would be 1.4 to 0.6, and then they would round at the state total.

This would have the advantage that it would would work with partial county results. Let's imagine that Bedford was still out, which would make it Clinton 16, Sanders 7, and 7 delegates not yet chosen.

Clinton could be projected as 16/30 * 2 = 1.07 state delegates (or 107 units)
Sanders would be 7/30 * 2 = 0.47 (or 47)
Still out 7/30 * 2 = 0.47 (or 47).

The alternative would be to attempt to project what will happen at the county convention. If we assume that all the county delegates will show up and vote for their candidate, then a 21:9 split translates to 1.4 and 0.6 state delegates, which rounds to 1 for Clinton and 1 for Sanders.

How I got to a 21:9 split for county delegates in Taylor County.

County delegates are allocated to each precinct in proportion to the Obama(P2012) + Hatch(G2014) vote:

Blockton 92
Bedford 403
Clearfield 161
Gravity 127
Legion 183
Lenox 649
New Market 174

The precinct results are:

Blockton: 100%:0%. which means 1:0 or some integer multiple.
Bedford 71.4%:28.6%, 5:2 or some multiple.
Clearfield 100%:0%, 1:0 or some multiple
Gravity 50%:50%, 1:1 or some multiple.
Legion 66.7%:33.3%, 2:1 or some multiple.
Lenox 63.6%:36.4%, 7:4 or some multiple.
New Market 66.7%: 33.3%, 2:1 or some multiple.

If the multiple in every precinct is 1, then it would be 19:9, which would give Clinton 67.9%, which is not the 70.0% shown on the IDP website.

Sw we calculate the Obama+Hatch vote divided by the minimum number of delegates for a precinct.

Blockton 92/1 = 92.0
Bedford 403/7 = 57.5
Clearfield 161/1 = 161.0
Gravity 127/2 = 63.5
Legion 183/3 = 61.0
Lenox 649/11 = 59.0
New Market 174/3 = 58.0

The ratio of Obama+Hatch to delegates appears to be around 60, with Blockton and Clearfield needing more delegates.

Clearfield 161/2 = 80.5, and 100%:0% = 2:0 county delegates.
Blockton 92/2 = 46.0, and 100%:0% = 2:0 county delegates.

With these adjustments the county convention would be 21:9, which matches the 70%:30% split on the IDP website.

As a further check, we divide the 1789 Obama+Hatch votes by 30 = quota of 59.6 votes/delegate allocated.

Blockton 92/Q = 1.54 (rounds to 2)
Bedford 403/Q = 6.76 (7)
Clearfield 161/Q = 2.70 (round to 3)
Gravity 127/Q = 2.13 (rounds to 2)
Legion 183/Q = 3.07 (rounds to 3)
Lenox 649/Q = 10.88 (rounds to 11)
New Market 174/Q = 2.92 (rounds to 3)

This totals to 31. It appears that for some reason, county conventions have delegates that are a multiple of 5. Since the number of county delegates is fixed, we drop a delegate from Blockton, which has the smallest fraction over 0.50.

This would mean that it was actually:

Blockton 1:0
Clearfield 3:0

And still 21:9 for the county.

But this still doesn't tell us the popular vote. We don't know know how many attended the caucus and Legion, and we know that, Clinton had more support than Sanders (but it could be one person, or even a lucky coin flip), and Sanders had 1/6 of the delegates (this is the threshold when electing 3 delegates). So Clinton had between 50% and 83.3% of an unknown number of voters in Legion.

[jimrtex]

According to the link on uselectionatlas It seems the raw votes are

Clinton     69,631
Sanders   69,319
O'Malley       758

So Clinton wins by around 300 votes.

These are the State Delegate Equivalent numbers multiplied by 100.  Not raw vote totals in any way, shape, or form.

Note that means each county's vote totals should sum up to a multiple of 100 (modulo rounding errors).  This is not the case in Kossuth, Hancock, or Fremont counties, where some results must have just been irretrievably lost.

I was thinking they would report this in terms of the precinct delegates.  I guess maybe the reason they don't is that some delegates are not explicitly committed??

Each precinct elected delegates to county conventions.

The number of delegates per precinct is based on the Obama(P2012)+Hatch(G2014) results, and not the turnout in the precinct.

Further, the total number of delegates at each county convention is not based on the Obama(P2012)+Hatch(G2014) vote. If it were, then the convention in Polk County would be so Uugge it could not be held in the Trump Convention Center if there were such a beast, or some smaller counties could hold their convention in a living room (a couch and two chairs, if someone sat on the floor or an armrest, and the chairman stood next to the coffee table).

So county delegates can't be added, any more than we could add up state legislators and get a useful number.

[jimrtex]

Democrats have full results by precinct available here.

State delegates per county

You should be able to combine these two to produce a projection of actual state delegates. These should be totaled by congressional district since most national delegates are allocated at that level.