Democratic caucuses and primaries

lobosrul5 said:
I know Bloomberg didn't expect to do well in Iowa... but 20 votes in the entire state on the final alignment? :jaw-dropp
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Blomberg strategy is to concentrate on a few big states ignoring everything else. Don't know if that is a viable strategy. It has been tried before in the primary season;has never worked.
 
lobosrul5 said:
I know Bloomberg didn't expect to do well in Iowa... but 20 votes in the entire state on the final alignment? :jaw-dropp
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Bloomberg wasn't registered in Iowa (Instead, he is saving his resources for some of the bigger primaries later on). So any 'votes' he got there were the equivalent of write-ins. (Not sure how exactly those would be handled in a caucus situation, but given the general screw-ups I suspect it wouldn't be easy.) So its not surprising he got so few votes.

I've also seen at least one pundit claim Iowa might have been good for Bloomberg... he wasn't registered there so his loss is understandable, and after the problems they had, he can step in and say "You need someone who is competent... vote Bloomberg".

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/opin...s-from-iowa-fiasco-opinion-wierson/index.html
 
Perhaps an important outcome of the chaos in Iowa is that people will realize that it's not all that important and in the end is about divvying up all of 41 delegates. Woohoo, Pete and Bernie each got 11. They're in!

How often has the winner of the Iowa democratic caucus actually won the nomination? Iowa got "big" after Jimmy Carter had a surprisingly strong showing. But since then, has it ever propelled anyone anywhere?
 
dudalb said:
Blomberg strategy is to concentrate on a few big states ignoring everything else. Don't know if that is a viable strategy. It has been tried before in the primary season;has never worked.
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I don't think he's concentrating on the big states so much as he's pouring money into states where he can get on the ballot. I seem him on the air pretty regularly in Arizona, and I hardly ever watch TV, so I assume he's carpet-bombing the state.

The London bookies already have him ahead of Biden and Buttigieg, at about 21% to win the nomination.

Right now 538 has "other" (anybody except Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg and Warren) at 1%. That seems low. Steyer's double-digit percentages in four recent polls of South Carolina show what money can buy and Bloomberg has a lot more money than Steyer.
 
pgwenthold said:
Perhaps an important outcome of the chaos in Iowa is that people will realize that it's not all that important and in the end is about divvying up all of 41 delegates. Woohoo, Pete and Bernie each got 11. They're in!

How often has the winner of the Iowa democratic caucus actually won the nomination? Iowa got "big" after Jimmy Carter had a surprisingly strong showing. But since then, has it ever propelled anyone anywhere?
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Kerry in '04 and Obama in '08. Clinton won it in '16 but the margin was so narrow that the story became her under-performance.

The real issue is that the media give glowing treatment to the winners and talk about what went wrong for the losers for the next week. And that has a measurable effect on the upcoming contests. Biden dodged the bad news for a few days but his campaign definitely looks like it's taking on water.
 
dudalb said:
Blomberg strategy is to concentrate on a few big states ignoring everything else. Don't know if that is a viable strategy. It has been tried before in the primary season;has never worked.
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He seems to be in *all* of the later states, really - his strategy seems to be (have Iowa and NH, maybe even SC. After Super Tuesday, every state you go to, I'm already there".

He's one of my bottom-tier candidates, since he's also annoyingly authoritarian, although still better than the idiot currently in the WH.
 
Puppycow said:
Still not 100%, but getting close (man, this is taking forever; even doing it all manually, I can't understand why it's still not done).

Here's that link again so folks don't have to go back to previous pages for it:

https://features.desmoinesregister.com/news/politics/iowa-caucuses-results-alignment/

The above numbers are actually SDEs, not raw votes. Bernie is ahead in the raw votes.
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Now at 99.9%, a single precinct missing.

Bernie 26.6% raw votes (562 SDE), MayorCheat 25.0% raw votes (564 SDE). Someone should do the math on those last percentages. Bernie must have done stellar there. Stinks to high heaven like delaying specific results so that they can claim that Bernie didn't win for a bit longer.
 
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dudalb said:
Blomberg strategy is to concentrate on a few big states ignoring everything else. Don't know if that is a viable strategy. It has been tried before in the primary season;has never worked.
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I don't know if his strategy is a viable one, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.

Also, there's Tom Steyer. Two billionaires basically trying to buy their way into the conversation.



If we're going to have a billionaire, why can't it be Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates?
 
Puppycow said:
I don't know if his strategy is a viable one, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.

Also, there's Tom Steyer. Two billionaires basically trying to buy their way into the conversation.



If we're going to have a billionaire, why can't it be Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates?
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Because neither of them want the job, obviously. What do you have to offer a guy who has already found their vocation in life, and become independently wealthy pursuing that vocation?

Incidentally, what to make of someone whose vocation is politics, and becomes independently wealthy pursuing it?
 
Puppycow said:
I don't know if his strategy is a viable one, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.

Also, there's Tom Steyer. Two billionaires basically trying to buy their way into the conversation.



If we're going to have a billionaire, why can't it be Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates?
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I'd take Buffett over Gates, but like most of the other Dems he's too damn old. Even older than I thought, at 89! How about Jimmy Buffett instead?
 
Venom said:
Buttigieg and Sanders are basically tied in Iowa with all precincts reporting.

Both men snatching 11 delegates.
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I wonder if Sanders is worried about that at all.

After all, given the dedication of his support base, he should have his greatest strength in caucuses (where time commitments are a significant issue), as opposed to primaries (where it would favor candidates with broader but less dedicated support). And having probably the best name recognition, he should have been a clear winner. Instead, he's almost tied.

(And no, this is not a prediction that Sanders will lose, either the nomination or the general election. Just some idle speculation.)
 
lobosrul5 said:
Buttigieg is now surging in NH polling:

https://www.nationalreview.com/news...-support-with-12-point-gain-in-new-hampshire/

(Boston Globe's website is paywalled, national review is quoting it)
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In my opinion, that is a very good thing. I would love to have a centrist Dem to vote for who isn't a million years old. I know I am not alone.
Segnosaur said:
I wonder if Sanders is worried about that at all.

After all, given the dedication of his support base, he should have his greatest strength in caucuses (where time commitments are a significant issue), as opposed to primaries (where it would favor candidates with broader but less dedicated support). And having probably the best name recognition, he should have been a clear winner. Instead, he's almost tied.

(And no, this is not a prediction that Sanders will lose, either the nomination or the general election. Just some idle speculation.)
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I doubt Sanders is all that worried. He and Mayor Pete aren't competing with one another yet. If Warren drops out, then maybe Sanders will start eyeing the Buttigeg vote. I also think that Pete almost certainly benefited from being a lot of peoples second choice, which isn't an advantage in the primaries, unless Biden and/or Warren drop out.
 
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Childlike Empress said:
Now at 99.9%, a single precinct missing.

Bernie 26.6% raw votes (562 SDE), MayorCheat 25.0% raw votes (564 SDE). Someone should do the math on those last percentages. Bernie must have done stellar there. Stinks to high heaven like delaying specific results so that they can claim that Bernie didn't win for a bit longer.
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Still missing that one precinct. But https://results.thecaucuses.org/ has 100%. SDE:

MayorCheat: 564.012
Sanders: 562.497

So on top of whatever bizarre mechanism leads to those "SDE" units, there's some very lucky rounding involved to keep the impression that MayorCheat at least won in that category.
 
I skimmed the thread and did a search and didn't see this; apologies if it's repeated elsewhere. At least some of the chaos was caused by the tools at 4chan.

4chan trolls tied up caucus hotline to disrupt results reporting

Users on a politics-focused section of the fringe 4chan message board repeatedly posted the phone number for the Iowa Democratic Party, which was found by a simple Google search, both as screenshots and in plain text, alongside instructions.

"They have to call in the results now. Very long hold times being reported. Phone line being clogged," one user posted at about 11 p.m. ET on Monday, three hours after the caucuses began.

"Uh oh how unfortunate it would be for a bunch of mischief makers to start clogging the lines," responded another anonymous user, sarcastically.

Some users chimed in, posting alleged wait times on hold, imploring others to “clog the lines [and] make the call lads.”
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