Iowa Dems release '100 percent' of caucus vote totals showing Buttigieg ahead, amid calls for recanvass

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DNC chair Tom Perez calls for complete Iowa recanvas

Close race between Buttigieg and Sanders; Trace Gallagher reports.

The Iowa Democratic Party announced that "100 percent" of precincts were finally reporting results late Thursday night -- 72 hours after the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses concluded on Monday, and after numerous irregularities led the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to call for a complete recanvass.

The state party's numbers showed that Pete Buttigieg would be awarded 564 SDEs, or state delegate equivalents, while Bernie Sanders would receive 562 SDEs. Sanders held a sizeable popular vote lead, though, and finished ahead of Buttigieg by a 43,671 to 37,557 vote margin. He fell behind in delegates due to Iowa's unusual voting system that gave different delegate weights to different precincts.

After the "second alignment" -- meaning the popular vote after the elimination of candidates who received less than 15 percent of the vote in the first round of caucusing -- Sanders was still ahead of Buttigieg, 45,826 votes to 43,195.

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Almost immediately after the new results posted, more reports of discrepencies popped up. One precinct captain wrote on Twitter that he could "faithfully say" that the reported results were obviously "bulls--t."

"As a precinct captain in DM 06, I know for a fact the numbers reported for that district for every candidate who got more than 0 votes are wrong," Scott Santens wrote. "185 people caucused there. They say only 92 did."

A damning analysis by The New York Times found that the Iowa Democratic Party's figures were full of apparent errors, in which vote numbers from several precincts did not match totals provided by the party, and in which numerous precincts seemingly didn't follow caucus rules. In one especially bizarre apparent mistake, the party reported that Deval Patrick had dominated in central Iowa, apparently because Sanders' votes had been incorrectly recorded as votes for Patrick.

And, despite the Iowa Democrats' website saying "100 percent" of precincts were reporting, it appeared several caucus sites still had no data reported. The state party's website apparently rounded up to 100 percent from 99.5 percent.

Buttigieg was speaking on-stage at a CNN town hall when the numbers went live, and despite all of the apparent problems, anchor Chris Cuomo suggested the former South Bend, Ind., mayor had won the caucuses.

"That is fantastic news," Buttigieg said. "We are looking to New Hampshire and beyond."

But Sanders, minutes earlier and throughout the day, had said he won the race, considering his popular vote advantage.

VIEW THE STATE DELEGATE TOTALS

The disastrous caucuses drew mockery from President Trump earlier in the day, as he argued in the East Room of the White House that Democrats could not be trusted to run the nation's health care system if they couldn't even count votes in a timely and reliable manner.

Elizabeth Warren finished with 387 SDEs, Joe Biden with 341, Amy Klobuchar with 264, and Andrew Yang with 22. By popular vote, Warren had 32,533 votes after the first round of caucusing and 34,771 after the second; Biden had 26,384 after round one and 23,691 after round two; and Klobuchar had 22,469 after round one and 21,181 after round two. Yang plummeted from 8,821 in the first round to 1,780 in the second.

Those numbers were catastrophic for Biden, who has run his campaign on the notion that he's the most electable candidate. For other candidates, the confusion threatened to overshadow the typical media-driven momentum boost that results from a strong Iowa performance.

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At the same time, it remained unclear whether the results would stand, or whether there could be more changes. DNC head Tom Perez earlier Thursday called for a recanvass of the results of the Iowa caucuses, saying it was needed to "assure public confidence" after three days of apparent technical issues, vote-counting irregularities and delays.

"Enough is enough," Perez wrote on Twitter.

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Meanwhile, The Associated Press said Thursday it was unable to declare a winner of the Democrats' Iowa caucuses.

"The Associated Press calls a race when there is a clear indication of a winner. Because of a tight margin between former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders and the irregularities in this year’s caucus process, it is not possible to determine a winner at this point," wrote Sally Buzbee, AP's senior vice president and executive editor.

The caucus crisis was an embarrassing twist after months of promoting Iowa as a chance for Democrats to find some clarity in a jumbled 2020 field. Instead, after a buildup that featured seven rounds of debates, nearly $1 billion spent nationwide and a year of political jockeying, caucus day ended with no winner and no official results.

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Campaigning in New Hampshire, Sanders called the Iowa Democratic Party's management of the caucuses a “screw-up" that has been "extremely unfair" to the candidates and their supporters.

"We've got enough of Iowa," he said later Thursday at a CNN town hall, just before Buttigieg spoke. "I think we should move onto New Hampshire."

Fox News' Mitti Hicks and The Associated Press contributed to this report.