Early (and Later) Iowa Caucus Results
I was just about to post a graphic of the chart there at 8:47pm, but in the time it took me to printscreen and edit the PNG file, the early "lead" switched from Cruz up over Trump with 35% to 30% of those tallied so far, to Trump being up ever so slightly, 32.7% to 32.4%.
Rubio's the clear third place steadily, now at 13.4%, but Carson isn't that far behind in fourth place at 9.4%.
From Carson on down, there's about 23% of the votes split among those nine. Bush is sixth, with a measly 2.3% of votes so far.
Now at almost 9pm ET, Cruz is slightly ahead, by about 1%. Kasich is doing much worse than even I think he would've: 8th, below Fiorina.
Clinton's ahead by 6%, but Sanders has a whopping 46.5% of the Democrats so far there.
After this, I'm hoping a few GOP candidates stop running. Which ones? Carson, Paul, Bush, Huckabee, Fiorina, Kasich, Christie, Santorum, "Other" (?), Gilmore.
Christie is doing very poorly, as I expected a Jersey Boy to do in corn country.
The Dems caucus process is taking forever. Only 221 votes tallied? To the GOP's about 6,000? On the radio tonight I heard a summary of how both go about this. Do go read up on it yourselves. It's no wonder the Dems take so long. They have to stand around, in little "herds" of voters, and if one "herd" doesn't seem to be gaining enough members, they then can decide to a) go home and not vote or b) migrate to another candidate's "herd" and there is lots of cajoling, wooing, persuading, recruiting, even arm-twisting, going on among the voters and the party machine people.
Whereas the Republicans have one vote, they put it on a piece of paper, they hand it in, and they're counted in front of the caucuses.
Why am I not surprised? Kind of reminds you why there's more things wrong with Democrat-controlled cities and states than the other party's.
At 9:06 pm ET, Cruz now leads by 2 whole percentage points. Sanders is now within about 4 points of Clinton. The Dems still only have 294 votes tallied? I'm very curious now, to see how many caucusers really come out for their side, period, by the end of the night. Could the disparity be that bad, in Iowa? At 9:18pm ET, the RCP website, I think, says that 44% of Democrat precincts and only 22% of Republican precincts have tallied their votes. If that's accurate, that could mean there are only 1,140 total Democratic caucusers? To the Republicans total 135,486 caucusers?
The Sun Sentinel and US News & World Report both referred--before the caucus began--to the total numbers, including both parties, being "a couple hundred thousand people." So that would have to mean the Dems actually had somewhere between 15,000 (if "a couple hundred thousand total") and maybe 174,000 (if they turned out in record numbers like in 2008, which sounds highly unlikely, from all reports).
Quoted the website Bustle:
"According to PBS, Iowa's voter turnout represented just 0.1 percent of the entire population of the United States in 2008 (and that was an election that attracted more voters than usual)."PBS' article gives more details:
In 2012, 121,503 Republicans — or 19.7 percent of the state’s 614,913 registered GOP voters — participated in the caucus. The low turnout rate applies to both parties: In 2004, 23.3 percent of registered Democrats in the state cast a ballot.It also has a graphic that says the 2008 total Iowa Caucus turnout, actual voters, was 359,000 people. So 359,000 total minus 239,872 Democrats that year equals 119,128 Republican caucus voters. Almost the same as in 2012.The one recent exception was 2008, when there was unusual excitement on the left surrounding Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s barrier-breaking campaigns. That year, 239,872 Iowa Democrats — or 39.5 percent of the state’s registered Democratic voters — participated in the party’s caucus.
However, the record turnout in 2008 also included independents who registered as Democrats to vote in the party’s caucus.
Business Insider reported at "7:45 p.m. ET -- The Des Moines Register's Jennifer Jacobs reported that she's seeing "crazy amounts of new registrations" at GOP caucuses..."
On January 3, 2012, Obama got 8,064 "votes" in Iowa, out of a total 8,152. The 2008 data above was hard to find, because the Iowa Dems don't release the actual voter counts, they only like to talk about "delegate Equivalents" and "superdelegate count." Gee, I wonder why. Maybe the American public would actually learn how the two parties really do stack up every four years in each primary. How deceptive can you get? Hiding the actual vote totals means you, um, have something to hide.
At 10pm ET, 59% of GOP voters and 69% of Dem voters are counted, with 93,645 votes, and "854," respectively.
That means the Republicans might be on track to total 158,720 voters now?
Don't take my word for these Dem vote counts. Here's the 10pm ET screenshot:
Cruz leads by about 3.3 points with 62% of votes reported. Rubio is now nipping at Trump's second-place heels, with 21.9% to Trump's 25%.
Sanders has now, 10:18pm ET, closed within 1.3% of Hillary, a difference of only 13 votes. 527 for Clinton, 514 for Bernie. Imagine the arm-twisting going on there right now on the donkey side of the house.
38% of GOPers and 21% of Dems are yet to be counted, at 10:20 ET. I hadn't planned to live-blog this, but I'm very tempted to stay up till the end, to get a screenshot of those final vote counts then.
81% of GOP and 82% of Dem votes in now. If true, then there could be as many as 183,000 GOP caucusers voting tonight, as about 154,00 are already counted. This would utterly shatter the number I read about a day ago, here's the link:
"Four years ago, a record-breaking number of Iowans — 121,503 — participated in the Republican caucuses. If turnout exceeds 135,000 this year, GOP insiders agree, it will be an indication that Donald Trump has attracted a significant number of new voters to the caucuses. And if the increase is even more drastic — say, upwards of 150,000, which some Republicans believe is possible — then Trump will likely win. But if turnout is below 135,000, Iowa will be Ted Cruz’s to lose..."National Review published that. Kind of ironic given their anti-Trump issue. Yet, with 84% of the GOP votes in at 10:31pm ET, Cruz is still up by 3.3% over Trump. Unless Trump has a late surge...it may not be Cruz's to lose.
At 10:36 pm ET, Sanders has now closed to within nine votes of Hillary. She must be freaking out, because their process allows people to switch as they see fit, so if anyone hasn't been "persuaded" yet, I'm guessing the Clinton strong-arm is in full-swing. Oh, make that EIGHT votes, Sanders gained one on her. And there are roughly "190" left to vote/and/or be counted on the Dems side. Make that SEVEN votes away, for Bernie to tie her up, at 10:43pm ET.
It appears that there's a Checkmark now next to Cruz's name at 10:44pm ET:
And Bernie just got within 6 votes of Hillary.
THE LINK I'M WATCHING IS HERE.
Rubio is now 1.4% points under Trump, at 10:51pm ET, with 23% of the total so far. Probably won't overtake him, but that's damn close. Bush? 2.8%. About one-tenth of Rubio's numbers. Bye-bye, Jeb.
Three votes separate Sanders from Clinton, at 10:54pm ET. This could take all night, at this rate. Typical Democrat-government-run results. And both parties have 89% of votes counted.
About 166,000 Republicans have had their votes counted as of 11:03pm ET. That could mean, with 89% reported, that a total of 186,000 will be the finale.
Why are the Dems so secretive about the actual number of voters? The level of mind-boggling complexity in their twisted machinations over these numbers is beyond the pale. Even if those are the "equivalent" numbers they fudge to hide the real ones, where did the rest of those 8,152 "voters" from 2012 go? Did they stay home? Did they vote for Trump? Can't wait to see the spin the mainstream media will put on this: I GUARANTEE you they will not tell you of the actual poorer numbers for the Dems.
At 10:45pm ET: CNN announces Ted Cruz the winner on the GOP side. And see? Not one peep about the real turnout for the Dems or the single-digit-vote-difference between Hillary and Sanders, at all, tonight. So no one outside of that caucus tonight will know that truth. They'll only see percentages.
The LA Times. They have a teaser "The caucuses get huge attention, but the number of people involved? Fewer than at a Dodgers game" but it links directly to "Article not found" then right to their front page which doesn't have the teased story.
The Washington Post decides to deride Cruz immediately, instead of reporting on the Dem actuals: "The remarkable declines of the last two Iowa caucus winners." Yeah, that's the ticket! Get us thinking about anything except the Dems' real numbers as compared to the GOP's in the caucus.
Slate chooses to focus on the "incredibly tight" Dem caucus results. And not a whisper about anything but "percentages."
The New York Times confirms pretty much what I surmised: "Turnout at tonight’s Republican caucuses in Iowa was about 185,000, a new record, according to Edison Research, which conducted entrance polls at precincts across the state." Funny. No mention of the Dem "turnout numbers." Shouldn't they get applause too, for besting a record themselves, but on the underperformance side?
Amazing too, how slow the rest of the liberal press is at posting a news summary about all this. At 11:30 pm ET, a google search doesn't yield more than those four.
O'Malley (who?) and Huckabee drop out of the race. Santorum, inexplicably, moves on to South Carolina?
Sanders is 10 votes down now from Hillary, with 93% of them counted, and those few newspapers putting anything out only say "It's too close to call." Really? You got a journalism degree to tell us that?
At 11:41pm ET, Sanders is again only 3 votes down, "652", to "655" Hillary votes. Even if those numbers are really the "State Delegate Equivalents" that only "represent the estimated number of state convention delegates that the candidates would have, based on the caucus results," even in 2008, there were 2,501 Democrat State Delegate Equivalents, not 1,400 like tonight.
I know this is Iowa, not Manhattan or Chicago or Beverly Hills, but some perspective here: Cruz got 50,874 actual, headcount votes so far, with 97% reported. Trump got 44,654. Rubio got 42,322. And 10 other candidates split another 45,000 among them.
And if the Democrats had such great turnout numbers, wouldn't they be trumpeting them, the way the NYT had to admit that the GOP broke record for turnout tonight? You bet your sweet bippy they would. If they had even close to those huge numbers, you can be damn sure they'd be crowing about it so you wouldn't think that this was going to be a landslide election for a Republican President-to-be.
Politico finally chimes in calling it "Too close to call" and says it's a "tiny lead over Sanders." Yeah, as in "three votes," for most of the past hour or so. And this is telling: they used one of the scariest photos of a deranged-looking, shouting Hillary that I've ever seen.
But they wrote that Clinton gave some kind of speech, that "the race was called", and that she "breathed a sigh of relief." More Clinton spin! News flash, Hillary, you haven't won yet, you're a mere 3 or 4 "votes" ahead most recently and still, at 12:10am ET. And even if you win, any smart person will know it was by less than ten "votes." But you're sighing in relief? I don't believe that for a nanosecond.
TheHill reported later that "Earlier in the evening, the [Clinton] campaign told MSNBC that it is declaring victory, but no media organization had followed suit by late Monday night."
And what did Sanders' supporters chant when listening to Hillary's speech on TV, before turning off that TV? "She's a liar!"
C-SPAN has a video story about "Clinton voter fraud in Polk County, Iowa Caucus."
That ASTERISK, defined way at the very bottom of the page, allows the Democrats in Iowa to tell you whatever they want to tell you, as far as the numbers go, and you'll never know if it's the truth:
*"The Iowa Democratic Party doesn't report vote totals. Figures are state delegate equivalents, which are the estimated number of state convention delegates the candidates would receive based on caucus results. National convention delegates for Democratic candidates are estimates and may change at later stages of the selection process."It's 12:38am ET, and Sanders is still only 4 votes behind Hillary, however you count them.
Last screenshot of the night (for me anyway):
Links to check in the morning here and here.
[FEBRUARY 11, 2016: IOWA CAUCUS TURNOUT UPDATES, both Democrats and GOP, are now discussed/linked to here.]
posted by Annie at 8:40 PM
