SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

[Elfdart]

I want Bernie to win big tonight just so I can watch the reaction of the DNC hacks on MSNBC. Judging from how Chris "Tweety" Matthews was almost in tears this morning, it's going to look like the opening of the Ark of the Covenant:

[The Romulan Republic]

Bernie's looking good so far, Warren is looking like a strong second place in at least some places.

The repudiation of the Center, and the progressives' place in the heart of the party, are becoming increasingly clear.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its taking a long time for final results to come in- last I heard it was at 0%, when over 80% had reported by the same time in 2016.

While this is likely due to changes in the caucus system, its probably going to cause a lot of wild conspiracy theories to fly by the supporters of whoever doesn't win.

[The Romulan Republic]

Okay, results have started coming in.

Thus far, from the numbers I've seen on CNN, it looks like the big winners tonight are Sanders and Buttigieg in a lot of precincts. Disappointed by Buttigieg, but not too worried about him either- his low numbers in other states, and minimal black support, will make it hard for him to have a viable path going forward even if he's first or second tonight. Bernie, meanwhile, has a likely win in New Hampshire and a possible win in Nevada coming up.

[Jub]

Honestly, I almost don't care which of the Dems wins as long as the one who does is capable of beating Trump but Bernie leading in key states is a good sign.

[The Romulan Republic]

Honestly, I almost don't care which of the Dems wins as long as the one who does is capable of beating Trump but Bernie leading in key states is a good sign.

Bernie has done an admirable job of broadening his base and developing stronger policies on stuff like immigration reform, while keeping the same energy and economic justice/anti-corruption vision he had all along. He's the only one who really has a distinct vision, and the enthusiasm, to match the uglier energy of Trump's rallies and base.

Beyond that, I'm rooting for him (despite initially backing Warren) because I think its likely to be him or a Centrist, and given he'll almost certainly win New Hampshire, him taking Iowa basically gives him a solid lead early on, while I think anyone else winning tonight likely means a long, drawn out, divisive primary.

[The Romulan Republic]

My bad, looks like still no official results- CNN's just running random demographic polls.

Damn it I have work tomorrow- I'd rather not be up all night to see who won!

[Jub]

Beyond that, I'm rooting for him (despite initially backing Warren) because I think its likely to be him or a Centrist, and given he'll almost certainly win New Hampshire, him taking Iowa basically gives him a solid lead early on, while I think anyone else winning tonight likely means a long, drawn out, divisive primary.

Yeah, it would be great to have a clear front runner as early as possible so we can avoid a campaign where the Dems do half of Trump's job for him.

[The Romulan Republic]

So, the Iowa Democratic Party just released a statement saying that its taking so long to report because of inconsistencies between the three different ways of verify the vote (one is an app, one photographic, and one paper trail, I believe). They reassured that the app did not go down and there is no hack. They just say it'll take time to verify all the results.

Honestly, its probably for the best they do it slowly and meticulously. Accurate vote-counting is not something you want to rush.

One result has been reported on thus far- a precinct where Bernie had over twice Buttigieg's votes, Warren was second... and they all got two delegates.

Fucking caucuses.

[The Romulan Republic]

Buttigieg on, preemptively claiming victory, with a row of no doubt strategically placed black supporters behind him (yeah Buttigieg, we're totally buying that that's an accurate representation of your support among black voters... not).

One of the people on CNN was talking about how much support Sanders had lost since 2016... in a race where there were only two major candidates vs the five major candidates tonight. Also talk of how Sanders is to blame for the delay tonight because his campaign pushed for changes to the caucus rules.

Its really getting pathetic.

[Gandalf]

Ridiculous caucus issues aside, how do you fuck up a vote this basic?

[The Romulan Republic]

Ridiculous caucus issues aside, how do you fuck up a vote this basic?

Apparently they used a new system, with three different methods of counting the vote, which in theory sounds good (corroboration), but there were inconsistencies of an unspecified nature, and now they're taking their time to recheck everything. Apparently the Biden campaign has already sent a letter demanding a full explanation from the party.

Now half the voters are probably going to say its rigged, whoever wins. And Donald Trump will be shouting "Crooked Dems rigged primary!" at the top of his lungs to split the vote.

They should just have all elections be by straight popular vote on paper ballots, to be counted with witnesses from all the campaigns present. Pretty much no way to significantly fuck that up, barring a fire at the polling station or something.

I'm just hoping there will be enough outrage at this fuck up to finally kill the fucking Iowa caucuses (nearly every other state has abandoned caucuses in favor of primaries this year).

[His Divine Shadow]

The american voting system is such a mess. I mean logistically. Would be easiest to just keep it to pen and paper.

And the DNC is incompetence incarnate to boot. They make trump look competent on occasion.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sanders campaign has announced they're releasing some of their own internal data on caucus results now.

I get the frustration, but I'm not sure that's a wise move- if the official party data ends up diverging from it in any way, however small or innocuous, its going to be gasoline on the the "rigged primary" narrative.

Edit: And they've announced they won't be putting the official results out until tomorrow. What an embarassingly stupid way to start the election season. People better lose their job over this.

[The Romulan Republic]

Took at look at the comments on the Iowa Democratic Party's Facebook page. Its... not nice, although so far not seeing any conspiracy theorism. The overall tone seems to be exasperation, and support for stripping Iowa of its "first to vote" status.

Hear, hear.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sanders campaign data.

Now, I'm going to say I don't think Sanders' campaign should have released their data like this- though they acknowledge its not a substitute for the final official data, and its understandable that they'd want to be able to give their supporters something concrete, claiming victory now on partial data representing only 40% of the races is highly questionable (why not release all their data? Have they not finished counting either?). And if it clashes with the final official results, its likely going to lead to a massive surge in conspiracy theories and Bernie or Bust sentiment. So I think this was probably ill-considered and irresponsible.

That said, the results, partial as they are, are intriguing:

https://commondreams.org/news/2020/02/0 ... ortion-its

After a "debacle" with the Iowa Democratic Party's inability to release official results for the state's first-in-the-nation primary event on Monday night, the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders cited the "interest of transparency" by releasing a portion of their internal figures—representing data from nearly 40 percent of precincts in the state—that showed the candidate coming out on top.

"We recognize that this does not replace the full data from the Iowa Democratic Party, but we believe firmly that our supporters worked too hard for too long to have the results of that work delayed," said Jeff Weaver, senior adviser to the campaign, in a statement released shortly after 12:15am local time in Iowa.

According to the figures, Sanders received just over 28% of the vote during the first alignment of the caucuses in those districts, compared to second-place finisher Pete Buttigieg who ended with slightly under 21% and Sen. Elizabeth Warren who ended up in third with 19%. Presumed frontrunner Joe Biden, meanwhile ended up in fourth place during the first round with nearly 14%.

In the second and final count, according to Sanders' partial internal numbers, the Vermont senator bested all his rivals by receiving nearly 30%, while Buttigieg was at approximately 25%, and Warren landed with 21%. Biden ended up in fourth place with 12%, just ahead of fifth-place Sen. Amy Klobuchar who landed with 11%.



The data set, said the campaign, was collected by "trained Sanders volunteers at representative precincts from all four congressional districts from a cross section" of both urban and more rural areas in the state.

As The Hill noted, absence of the official results on Monday night left a large vacuum that candidates were left trying to fill:

The Iowa caucuses have traditionally given the winning candidate a critical boost heading into other early-voting states and winnowed the field by culling candidates who underperformed.

But the errors and delays robbed the candidate who will eventually be declared the winner of an opportunity to bask in the warm glow of victory, and reap the financial rewards that a flood of fundraising dollars could have brought to a cash-strapped campaign. And the candidates who might have exited the race after a poor result will instead soldier on to New Hampshire, where the first-in-the-nation primary has never been plagued by such delays.

The Iowa Democratic Party, facing serious scrutiny for its handling of the caucus results, has indicated that official results will not be released until sometime on Tuesday. Despite the lack of official results, Sanders—like all the other candidates—took to the podium to deliver remarks to his supporters late Monday night:



Regardless of final officials numbers yet announced, political columnist for The Week Ryan Cooper argued in an early-morning post that the "debacle" in Iowa should be seen as a boon to Sanders. The caucus, wrote Cooper,

was a disastrous 50-car pileup of technical failures. An app for reporting results apparently developed at great expense by the Iowa Democratic Party completely failed, and party officials didn't have a sufficient backup plan. One precinct captain was explaining how he had been on hold with the party headquarters for over an hour to CNN's Wolf Blitzer when they abruptly answered the phone, only to hang up on him when he didn't answer fast enough. By midnight, less than 2 percent of the results were officially reported.

Nevertheless, it is reasonably clear that Bernie Sanders is now the frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic nomination. Sanders may or may not win Iowa outright, but given that he was ahead in the final polls and that reports from Monday night seemed to confirm his dominant position in many highly populated areas of the state, he will certainly be at or near the top.

If Warren, Buttigieg—and possibly Klobuchar—come out ahead of Biden, warned Cooper, things will look dire for the former vice president.

"If Biden's numbers start to crater, and Sanders racks up a few state victories, as seems likely, he will very likely to scoop up a plurality of Biden supporters," opined Cooper.

"Obviously we are still very early in the process, and things could change rapidly," he concluded. "But for the moment, everything is coming up Bernie."

Looks like a close-fought race between Bernie and Buttigieg for first place- with Bernie's far greater nation-wide strength, and likely New Hampshire win, that does seem to put Bernie in the frontrunner position regardless of the final outcome of Iowa.

Warren and Klobuchar look to have had strong showings.

It is possible Joe Biden came in fifth place. His campaign is probably fucked now. Given that many Biden supporters have Bernie as their second choice, the Biden camp is likely to start bleeding supporters to Bernie rapidly.

So unless this data is completely off, I think we can call tonight a Sanders win.

Edit: I'll note that between Sanders and Warren, the progressive wing of the party has a solid majority of votes here. Guess the establishment ain't the establishment any more.

[His Divine Shadow]

The butt came out and declared himself winner in the caucus, before any results were in. This was said to be the reason behind releasing the partial count.

[The Romulan Republic]

The butt came out and declared himself winner in the caucus, before any results were in. This was said to be the reason behind releasing the partial count.

I don't like it, given the risks of releasing partial data at this point, but I'll concede that makes a certain sense- blunt any momentum Buttigieg might gain with that narrative, keep their team's morale up, and make sure to keep them honest, just in case there is anything crooked afoot.

Buttigieg's going to look real stupid if Bernie's data foreshadows the final results.

[The Romulan Republic]

Buttigieg has also cited his own internal data to continue claiming victory:

https://cnn.com/2020/02/04/politics/pet ... index.html

He's taking a lot of heat for declaring victory ahead of any official results, though (even Sanders hasn't made that claim, to my knowledge).

Anyway, looks like its either Sanders or Buttigieg in the lead, could go either way. I'd still call that a win for Sanders, though, since he has more room to grow going forward that Buttigieg does.

[Knife]

Hmm, was watching last night, funny how this thread wasn't as explosive as I'd thought it was. The DNC totally fubared the vote. Speculation in various places as to this will be the death nail to the ridiculous caucus system in IA. Late last week, newspaper reporters inquired about this 'new app' and were told it was made by a secret company and tested by a secret 3rd party. Things are starting to come out late last night. Shadow, a company under ACRONYM which is a DNC affiliated tech/communication company supported by a PAC (PACACRONYM) with people like David Plouffe; who was hilariously on the panel discussion on MSNBC during this debacle.

Not saying the DNC meant to do this, but damn is it going to put hesitation and concern into the validity of the vote. The DNC fucked this one up. Also this insane caucus system run by volunteers is overly complicated and dumb. Can we please add a competent national voting system to the list of things to fix?

[aerius]

Late last week, newspaper reporters inquired about this 'new app' and were told it was made by a secret company and tested by a secret 3rd party. Things are starting to come out late last night. Shadow, a company under ACRONYM which is a DNC affiliated tech/communication company supported by a PAC (PACACRONYM) with people like David Plouffe; who was hilariously on the panel discussion on MSNBC during this debacle.

It gets better. Apparently, the entire executive board of this Shadow company which made the app worked for Hillary's 2016 campaign, and the work on the app was paid for by Buttigeg and Biden. Talk about a clown show.

[Gandalf]

Hmm, was watching last night, funny how this thread wasn't as explosive as I'd thought it was.

I guess we're used to this level of DNC fuckup?

Not saying the DNC meant to do this, but damn is it going to put hesitation and concern into the validity of the vote. The DNC fucked this one up. Also this insane caucus system run by volunteers is overly complicated and dumb. Can we please add a competent national voting system to the list of things to fix?

Yeah, this'll put a whole cloud over whoever actually winds up winning the nomination, a bit like 2016.

[Lonestar]

I'm seeing people in my various feeds who are now trying to claim that Pete is a spook and so OBVIOUSLY he is behind all this.

[Dalton]

I'm seeing people in my various feeds who are now trying to claim that Pete is a spook and so OBVIOUSLY he is behind all this.

They actually think he's CIA, because there's no conspiracy too ludicrous

[Gandalf]

If there was any conspiracy, wouldn't come from party man Biden, suppressing bad numbers to keep his campaign afloat?