Sanders, Buttigieg request recount of Iowa caucus results

The presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg are requesting recounts of select caucus sites in Iowa, the state Democratic Party said on Thursday.

The requests come after a partial recanvass of the vote placed the two candidates within thousandths of a percentage point of one another in the state delegate equivalent count, the traditional metric by which a winner is declared in the state.

Buttigieg leads narrowly in that count but, due to caucus rules, leads Sanders by two delegates to the Democratic National Convention. 

The Iowa Democratic Party said that Sanders’s recount request focuses on 10 precincts, while Buttigieg’s request asks for a recount in 54 precincts. 

The Iowa caucuses were thrown into a state of chaos earlier this month after technical difficulties and reporting inconsistencies delayed the final results of the contest for days. Troy Price, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, resigned last week in response to the debacle.

The two campaigns requested a partial recanvass in the state, which involved reviewing the results from some caucus sites. The Iowa Democratic Party posted the results of that recanvass this week. 

Both Sanders and Buttigieg have declared victory in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, with the former claiming that he won the “popular vote” there and the latter pointing to his lead in the state delegate equivalent count.

Buttigieg currently leads in the national delegate count in the primary race, though Sanders has picked up considerable momentum following his narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary.

The recount requests come just three days before voters in Nevada weigh in on the primary race. 

The Iowa Democratic Party’s Recount/Recanvass Committee will review the recount requests to determine whether they meet the required standard of evidence suggesting that caucus errors would change the allocation of delegates.