The winner in Iowa may not get the most votes initially

The Iowa caucuses are weird, in case you haven’t noticed. With the polls so close, the person who wins the most statewide delegates may not be the person who a plurality of caucusgoers support going into the caucuses.

That’s important because the candidate with the most statewide delegate equivalents at the end of the night will be declared the winner of the caucuses by the major news networks. Part of the reason is realignment of supporters.

How is that possible?

First, it’s about reallocation. The minimum amount of support candidates needed to be eligible to pick up statewide delegate equivalents on Monday night is 15%. When a candidate does not have at least 15% support, his or her supporters must reallocate to a candidate who does or they leave the caucus site.

​Second, the number of delegates that are up for grabs is preassigned before voting. Some rural counties will have a lot more delegates than they should based solely on the number of Democrats caucusing.

This process can lead to small, but significant, differences going from the initial vote count to the delegate count.

We can see this by looking at past years. Now, I should say, this is the first year in which initial preferences will be officially reported. Before 2020, only the results of the statewide delegate equivalents, calculated after realignment, were recorded.

Still, we can still look at past years’ initial preferences extrapolated from sample precincts, recorded by Edison Research, to get an understanding of why initial preference does not necessarily equal winning the most delegates.

In 2004, for example, John Kerry beat John Edwards 37% to 33% in the final count. On initial preferences, Kerry’s margin over Edwards was closer to 10 points. It wasn’t that Kerry didn’t pick up supporters after the initial vote. It was that Edwards picked up more.

Edwards was probably helped by a deal he struck with Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich agreed to support Edwards if he fell short of viability in an individual caucus. That would help to partially explain why Edwards rose given Kucinich dipped from about 4% in initial preferences to 1% in the final tally.

Four years later, all the top candidates (Hillary Clinton, Edwards and winner Barack Obama) gained from initial preferences to statewide delegate equivalents. Edwards, though, gained the most. He was 4 points behind Clinton in the initial preferences. In terms of statewide delegate equivalents, he actually barely beat Clinton out.

Finally, look at what happened four years ago. Clinton and Bernie Sanders ended up nearly tied in the final statewide delegate equivalent count. On initial preferences, however, Clinton was up 3 points on Sanders. Sanders was likely helped out by grabbing a few uncommitted and Martin O’Malley backers.

What you should notice here is that swings of 3 points or greater between leading contenders have been quite common between the initial preference and the final statewide delegate equivalent tally.

This year, the average of Iowa polls have Joe Biden and Sanders within a few points of each other. Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren aren’t too far behind.

Given this history, it’s certainly close enough to believe that things could really change from the initial preference vote to statewide delegate equivalents.