The lines were huge for the Precinct 17 crowd. It was nearly 8:30 PM before we began listening to candidate representative pitch their candidates to the assembled crowd. There were so many people that candidates needed 132 supporters in order to be considered viable candidates. That's the 15% marker for our particular precinct.
Only two candidates were initially viable. They were Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Nobody else initially met the 15% threshold. Which led to an excruciating second alignment of delegates. Basically everyone else aligned with Amy Klobuchar or they went home. I didn't write down the total numbers for my precinct, but Elizabeth Warren gained 5 delegates, Bernie Sanders gained 5 delegates, and Amy Klobuchar gained 2 delegates.
Of course, that was one precinct out of 1,679 precincts statewide.
And the Iowa Democratic Party is still struggling to release the full results of last night's Democratic Caucuses. The party has run into ongoing problems with the computerized recording system that we're using. And have no doubt that there is a paper trail. Everyone completed a paper ballot complete with our names, addresses, signatures, and chosen candidate. But the party is struggling to assemble the completed totals.
But they did manage to release information from 62% of the state precincts earlier today, which yielded positing information for four candidates in particular. As of right now, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is leading the pack by a slim margin with 26.9% of the delegate count. He is following closely by Senator Bernie Sander (25.1%), Senator Elizabeth Warren (18.3%), and former Vice President Joe Biden (15.6%).
I will share the rest of the total when they become available -- and I'm fairly confident that this information will be fully released tomorrow.