Iowa Caucuses 2020: Bernie Sanders' campaign claims it is ahead, cites internal data
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign late on Monday released its internal numbers, showing the Democrat socialist winning the final alignment and the delegate equivalent in the Iowa Causes.
The numbers were released after an unprecedented delay in the result recording process with the Iowa Democratic Party citing "inconsistencies" in the reporting of three sets of results in the state.
Sanders' 2020 senior campaign advisor Jeff Weaver released the campaign's internal reporting numbers, which reportedly represents the results from nearly 40 percent of the precincts in Iowa.
Weaver said, "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."
The campaign data showed Sanders leading the poll with 29.66 percent, followed by former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg at 24.59 percent. Senator Elizabeth Warren bagged the third spot with 21. 24 percent, and former Vice President Joe Biden followed by a notably low 12.37 percent, nearly tying with Senator Amy Klobuchar at 11 percent.
It is not yet certain whether these numbers are accurate as we do not have any results from today's polls to compare them to.
Amidst mounting scrutiny over the whole caucus process and the Iowa Democratic Party's inefficiency, the party's Communications Director Mandy McClure released a statement, saying that "inconsistencies in the reporting" and technical glitches are the reasons behind the delay.
"We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report," McClure said.
"This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results," he added.
Buttigieg also claims win
Buttigieg's campaign also released their internal numbers projecting a win for the former South Bend, Indiana mayor. It is notable that Buttigieg's numbers are based on information from at least 77 percent of the precincts in Iowa, in comparison to Sanders' 40 percent.
Considering that Sanders' data shows the former mayor closely behind the Vermont Senator, Buttigieg could very well be the victorious candidate out of the Iowa polls.