Iowa Democratic caucuses: Live results

Amanda Northrop/Vox

After a delay in tallying, the Iowa Democratic Party plans to announce partial results Tuesday.

At long last, the Iowa Democratic Party is about to start reporting the 2020 caucus results — or so it claims.

After a delay of nearly a day since the caucuses took place, the state party has said it will post a “majority” of results around 5 pm Eastern.

The delay in the count is highly unusual and has apparently been driven by a combination of technical difficulties and human error. A poorly performing app for reporting results, a poorly staffed backup phone line for reporting results, and complicated new rules all seem to have played a role in the delay.

So far, the Iowa Democratic Party has not given a timetable for when it will release the full results.

And when these partial results do start coming in, there will be three separate metrics to watch.

The traditional way Iowa Democrats have determined who wins the Iowa caucuses is by state delegate equivalents. This is essentially taking the final results of the 1,600-plus precinct caucuses — which conclude in allotting county convention delegates to candidates — and weighting them to estimate how many state delegates that would correspond to. We’ll display that number here as it comes in, and if you’re interested in understanding the math behind this in further detail, I have a longer explainer at this link.

But this year, for the first time, Iowa Democrats will also release actual vote totals. First, they will release the initial vote totals each candidate got at each precinct — added up for a statewide total. This is the pre-realignment vote total, or Round 1.

After that, at each caucus gathering, supporters of candidates who are viable — above a particular threshold (15 percent in most precincts) — are locked in. However, supporters of nonviable candidates then have the opportunity to realign and change their votes. After this, we get the final vote total, displayed below.

The three separate metrics pose the possibility that different candidates will be leading. The initial vote total will show which candidate won plurality support overall, but then the final vote total will show whether certain candidates were better at picking up second-choice supporters. Then the state delegate equivalents are determined through an arcane formula that may advantage certain parts of the state.

The awkward delay in reporting these results has led to some odd situations — for instance, Pete Buttigieg declared victory despite the lack of results. But Bernie Sanders led polls going in and is expected by many to win at least the first-ballot result, though it’s unclear whether he gained much support from backers of other candidates during realignment. Elizabeth Warren is also believed to have finished in the top three overall.

Meanwhile, the frontrunner Joe Biden seems to have underperformed, based on anecdotal results and the campaigns’ partial tallies — most now expect him to finish near Amy Klobuchar. But all of this is, of course, subject to change based on the actual results that come in.