The narrative of the Iowa caucuses is being created at the moment, and the main takeaway appears to be that the race was essentially a tie: the margin of victory, looking at the county convention delegates elected, is in the tenths of a percent. The assumption that most people seem to have is that this translates into a 22-22 tie in the pledged delegates Iowa sends to the Democratic National Convention, but this is probably not going to be the case.
The delegate selection plan released by the Iowa Democratic Party is a worthwhile read, and it’s important to understand, since some of the concepts will carry over to translating future primaries and caucuses to national convention delegates.
The 44 pledged delegates are assigned in six groups: four of them are chosen at congressional district conventions, and the remaining two are chosen at the state convention. Delegates for both sets of these conventions are chosen at the county conventions, the delegates for which were the subject of last night’s caucuses.
The details on this matter because of how many delegates are assigned to each group, and the margins needed to flip an extra delegate into a candidate’s column. This will sound familiar, as it’s the same issue that came up last night in linking voters to county convention delegates — a 100-100 vote in a four delegate precinct had the same result as a 105-95 vote, or even a 120-80 vote, a 2-2 tie. The threshold to flip up to a 3-1 win is a 126-74 victory or better. On the other hand, a precinct with an odd number of delegates awards a +1 victory to the barest of majorities.
With that in mind, let’s look at the national convention delegates assigned to each congressional district:
- Congressional District 1: 8 delegates
- Congressional District 2: 8 delegates
- Congressional District 3: 7 delegates
- Congressional District 4: 6 delegates
As you can see, there’s only one district with an odd number of delegates assigned, where the bare majority is enough to result in a pickup for a candidate. And unfortunately for Sanders, this was Clinton’s best district: as you can see from the map above, it includes Des Moines/Polk County, which dominates the district by population, and which Clinton won by 7%. Sanders’ dominant district is CD-2, but he was not dominant enough to push things from 4-4 to 5-3.
The end result is that Clinton will probably come out of the congressional district conventions with a 15-14 lead.
The state convention decides on two groups of delegates, pledged party leader and elected officials (PLEOs) and at-large delegates. The assignments here are:
- PLEOs: 6 delegates
- At-large: 9 delegates
The at-large delegates are going to be the relevant group here, again because there’s an odd number of them. Assuming that the current results hold and that the county convention delegate to state convention delegate process maintains Clinton’s lead, the state convention is going to end with an 8-7 split.
The end result is a 23-21 win for Clinton, despite a virtual tie in the actual voting.
Again, this math matters going forward, because this congressional district process is also in place in other states. Winning an even-delegate region is less valuable, unless it’s a big win, than an odd-delegate region.