Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are in a virtual tie in Iowa with 97% of the vote reported.
The Iowa Democratic Party still has not reported all of the votes after an app meltdown and an overwhelmed official hotline delayed the results of Monday’s caucuses. Officials are reviewing paper ballots submitted by precincts and waiting on others that were sent through snail mail, according to The New York Times.
The updated results show Buttigieg with 26.2% of State Delegate Equivalents (SDE), which are used to determine the winner and award convention delegates, while Sanders is at 26.1% of SDE. Elizabeth Warren (18.2%), Joe Biden (15.8%), and Amy Klobcuhar (12.2%) round out the top five.
Though Buttigieg has a minor delegate lead, Sanders leads the raw vote by about 2,500 votes. Sanders is at 44,753, Buttigieg is at 42,235, Warren is at 34,312, Biden is at 23,051, and Klobuchar is at 20,525.
More than 100 new errors:
Even after the meltdown, the party continued to report errors in the reporting. In one case, votes for Bernie Sanders in Des Moines went to Deval Patrick while votes for Warren went to Tom Steyer.
Those errors were corrected but The New York Times discovered errors in more than 100 precincts.
Some precincts were missing data or reported results that were not possible under the caucus rules. In some cases, candidates were awarded the wrong number of delegates.
Trump supporters made matters worse:
Trump supporters flooded the hotline used by precinct officials to report the results, an Iowa Democratic official told party members on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.
“All the Trump people from around the country started calling and tearing everybody a new one,” Iowa Democratic Party treasurer Ken Sager said on a private call with party officials.
The Trump campaign denied that it has anything to do with the calls.
“Don’t know anything about that but maybe Democrats should consider using an app of some kind next time,” spokesman Tim Murtaugh told Bloomberg.
