Why Bernie Might Declare Victory in Iowa Even If He Loses

For the first time, the party won’t just reveal the final “state delegate equivalent” totals that the candidates earn based on a calculus that tallies up all the outcomes from caucus sites of different sizes — from big cities like Des Moines and Iowa City to remote rural areas — but also two raw-vote totals: the initial one when all caucusgoers are asked who they back, and the second one, once lower-voting campaigns are eliminated and Iowans backing them get to support their second picks.In theory, this added degree of transparency should give campaigns interesting data about the shape of their support. Campaigning in a caucus state is inherently different than campaigning in a primary state, where the raw vote is almost always the only total that matters.Yet earlier this month, Bernie Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver, his 2016 campaign manager, told the AP that “the first impression is probably the most accurate portrayal of who won the night,” raising the possibility that multiple candidates could declare victory based on the different measures announced by the state party. “It’s about delegates, because at the end of the day you could have a million people show up in one precinct and not have anybody else show up in another precinct, and you could be smoked on delegates.”Weaver, for his part, said he believes “it is true that you are potentially going to get a different first-round winner from the realignments — that is certainly true — but voters and the media are sophisticated enough to understand that.” Still, Weaver — who was one of the Sanders allies at the center of pushing this policy change as part of the Democratic National Committee’s post-2016 Unity Reform Commission — stood by his stance that he would be watching the initial raw count, no matter what his rivals say, and no matter what caucus history or delegate rules dictate.