Iowa Democratic Party finally releases some caucus results, but it's too little, too late

More than 20 hours after the Iowa caucuses started, the state’s Democratic Party released a substantial chunk of results. Troy Price, the state party chair, pledged that an investigation of what happened will follow, and that “an abundance of caution” has been exercised to ensure that the results being released are accurate.

This release brings the tally up to 62% of precincts reporting. Pete Buttigieg leads with 26.9% of the state delegates, followed by Bernie Sanders with 25.1% and Elizabeth Warren, with 18.3%. Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar followed at fourth and fifth. Sanders leads the popular vote with 28,220, followed by Buttigieg with 27,030, Warren with 22,254, and Biden 14,176. Again, though, this is 62% of the precincts, leaving 38% of precincts unreported.

But while some states are known to take a long time to count votes—California, for instance, where mail-in ballots are allowed if they’re postmarked by Election Day, where there are many, many votes to be counted, and where election officials set reasonable expectations about how long things will take—Iowa was a debacle because it shouldn’t take this long to get results on less than 200,000 caucus-goers, because it usually doesn’t take Iowa very long at all, and because state Democratic officials had set expectations for speedy returns. That’s the context in which conspiracy theories have spread, with an eager assist from Republicans.

There’s no question that one of the key takeaways is that Iowa’s future standing as The First is damaged. The question is, what should replace it?