IA-NYT/Siena: Tight 4-way-race

[Mr. Morden]

Full results at 538:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primaries/democratic/iowa/

Warren 22%
Sanders 19%
Buttigieg 18%
Biden 17%
Klobuchar 4%
Harris 3%
Yang 3%
Booker 2%
Steyer 2%
Gabbard 2%
everyone else 0%

[Mr. Morden]

Remember that you need 15% to be viable

Keep in mind the 15% threshold.

Remember though that this time they're actually going to release the raw count of initial preferences, before people reallocate their support on the 15% threshold.  I'm not sure how we know yet how the media is going to handle this. Will the initial preference vote be treated by the media as the "real" results?  Or will they put both sets of numbers up on the screen at once, or what?

I realize that the reallocated #s are the ones that determine delegate allocation, but Iowa's a small state with few delegates.  It matters so much only because of media framing / momentum reasons, so who the media crowns the "winner" matters more than delegates.

[Mr. Morden]

This is the first I'm hearing about what you described though. The media is somehow going to release all the first round results before any precinct moves on to their 2nd round of voting? Or once everything is done we'll get both numbers? If it's the former this sounds like a mess. If we end up getting both numbers after it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

The fact that they'll be releasing the pre-reallocation raw vote count is mentioned in passing in the Wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Iowa_Democratic_caucuses

and also here:

https://iowademocrats.org/iowa-democratic-party-proposes-historic-changes-2020-iowa-caucuses/

The IDP plans to release the raw totals from the first alignment, final alignment and the state delegate equivalents earned by each presidential preference group. State delegate equivalents will be used to determine the allocation of national delegates.

We know that the raw initial vote count will be released on the night of the caucus, but I don't think there's been any clarity on the exact timing beyond that.  Will they just give us the numbers for that at the end of the night (after having been tracking the "state delegate equivalent" number up until that point)?  Will initial and final preferences dribble out slowly precinct by precinct at the same time?  I don't think we know the answer to that.