Iowa Democrats Release Initial Candidate Caucus Result Numbers

The Iowa Democratic Party has released additional information and numbers from the Iowa Caucus held on February 5. While the vast majority of precincts did not break into preference groups for the governor’s race or congressional races, some did, and we now know how some of those turned out.

Overall, the party reports that 4,944 delegates were elected on caucus night, 82% of which have had their names entered into the party’s database. Only 109 precincts broke out into preference groups, which account for 6.49% of all precincts. Some of those precincts were larger than others, however, and 582 delegates were elected from preference group precincts, or 11.77% of the total number of delegates. 4,362 delegates were elected from their precinct as a whole, as in they did not get selected via preference group.

As for the current known breakdown of candidate support among those preference group delegates, the party has this:

The Cathy Glasson number is likely to rise sharply considering the precincts whose delegates are still unverified (which means local party members haven’t entered in the data yet) come mainly from Glasson strongholds in the state. Not a single preference group precinct from Johnson County has their delegates confirmed yet, and it looks like those make up just under half of the total unverified delegates. Both Dubuque and Poweshiek counties have two large precincts each that are unverified, as well.

Glasson’s campaign was the only gubernatorial operation that was pushing for preference group breakouts on a statewide basis. While they look to have won the most delegates out of those precincts, it’s still just a small fraction of the overall statewide delegate total. Even if the vast majority of the remaining unverified delegates were for Glasson and she got to around 300 total (which is probably higher than possible), that’s just 6% of the 4,944 delegates elected that night. The question for their campaign going forward is how many of those remaining delegates might favor Glasson but didn’t push for a preference group breakout.

Most of Cindy Axne’s delegates for the 3rd Congressional District appear to have come from her own home precinct, where she nabbed five delegate spots, with herself serving as one of those.

Most campaigns were content to get their supporters elected as delegates through uncommitted groups or just as generic delegates. Internally, they all probably have a good idea of where they really stand in preparation for a potential convention. Nate Boulton’s campaign claimed to have elected “thousands” of supporters to delegate slots on convention night, but that’s impossible to verify just yet.

And in many of the precincts on caucus night, there were legitimately undecided activists who got elected as delegates. All in all, there’s still a lot of jockeying for position that each campaign will be doing between now and the March 24 county conventions. Now the universe of people for that step in the caucus-to-convention process is set – a group of about 5,000 delegates and any number of alternates.

Unlike during a presidential caucus, the party held off on releasing candidate breakdown information until they could get more data verified. The off-year caucuses don’t usually have preference groups. The party will continue to put out more information on delegate numbers as they work with local volunteers to get data entered.

by Pat Rynard
Posted 2/17/18