Young supporters drive Sanders' virtual tie with Clinton
Monday night's Iowa Democratic caucuses delivered a tension-filled night in which a too-close-to-call race culminated in the closest results in the party's history.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's juggernaut campaign was nearly derailed by Bernie Sanders, a once little-known Vermont senator preaching economic revolution.
So just how did we end up with this nail-biter?
Clinton, determined not to see a repeat of her Iowa loss of 2008, invested in a massive ground game, advertised heavily and spent 50 days campaigning in Iowa. Sanders countered each move, spending 60 days campaigning in Iowa, inspiring an army of supporters willing to chip in small-dollar donations and building a statewide organization with dozens of staffers and some 15,000 volunteers.
While a coalition of older and more affluent voters eventually helped Clinton nab the slimmest of victories, younger voters and first-time caucusgoers fueled momentum that lifted Sanders to a virtual tie.
"This could have easily gone either way," said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison research, which interviewed 1,600 participants at 40 caucus sites for the National Election Pool, a consortium of major media outlets.
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Month after month, Clinton watched Sanders slowly march up the polls.
As recently as May, Clinton enjoyed the support of nearly 6 in 10 likely Democratic caucusgoers. But in every Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll since January 2015, Sanders' support rose. By the last two Iowa Polls, the gap separating the two had narrowed to within each poll's margin of error, separated by just 3 percentage points in the poll released Saturday night.
On Monday night, 171,109 voters turned out at Democratic caucuses, second only to the record turnout of 240,000 in 2008, when Barack Obama won against Clinton.
Some 17 hours after caucusing began, the Iowa Democratic Party reported that Clinton won 49.9 percent of state delegate equivalents to Sanders' 49.6 percent.
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Edison's entrance polls paint two starkly different portraits of those who supported Sanders and those who supported Clinton on Monday night. Caucusgoers under age 45 went overwhelmingly for Sanders, while those 45 and older strongly favored Clinton.
Sanders won support from 84 percent of caucusgoers under 30, and from 58 percent of attendees between the ages of 30 and 44. Participants ages 45 to 64 favored Clinton by a 58 percent to 35 percent margin, and 69 percent of participants over 65 backed her.
"The one thing that jumps out is that this is the biggest age differential I’ve ever seen in any exit poll or entrance poll," Lenski said.
Clinton also piled up support among established Democrats.
She was the top choice by a 56 percent to 39 percent margin among Democrats, while Sanders won 69 percent of voters who were “independents or something else.” The entrance polling showed Democrats comprised 78 percent of the turnout, and 20 percent were independents.
Iowa caucus coin flip count unknown
(Democratic caucus attendees must register as Democrats, but they may do so on caucus night and can shift their allegiance back to another party or no party afterward.)
In contrast, Sanders was the top choice among people who had never participated in the caucuses before: 59 percent of his supporters said Monday night was their first caucus, while 59 percent of Clinton’s supporters said they had caucused before.
Voters who identified themselves as “very liberal” favored Sanders by a margin of 19 percentage points, while majorities of self-identified “somewhat liberal” and “moderate” voters backed Clinton.
Many Iowa political observers have billed the razor-thin finish as an unusual win-win for both candidates. Clinton avoided a national embarrassment, and Sanders showed his chops by nearly winning, putting him in a position to continue competing with her in other states for the Democratic nomination.
However, Democratic activist Patty Judge, who is supporting Clinton's campaign, didn't see any win with these results.
"I don’t think either one of these candidates can call this a victory," Judge said. "They can call it a tie."
Clinton flips the map from 2008 caucuses
County and precinct-level results show Clinton has flipped her support in many parts of the state since her unsuccessful Iowa bid in 2008, when she lost to Obama and John Edwards.
For instance, her 2008 western Iowa strongholds of Pottawattamie and Woodbury counties fell to Sanders this year. In 2008, Clinton placed third in fast-growing, affluent Dallas County behind Edwards and Obama. This time, she won the Des Moines suburb with 57.5 percent of the vote.
"It's so fascinating. It's incredible," said Pat Rynard, a 2008 Clinton campaign staffer and Iowa politics blogger. "Many of Hillary Clinton's base areas of support completely flipped from 2008 to 2016. Clinton carried many of the middle-class, well-educated suburban precincts that Barack Obama dominated in 2008."
And the entrance poll shows Clinton dominating among wealthier caucusgoers, while Sanders captured most votes from lower earners.
"Literally, the map flipped sides from one side of the city to the other where Clinton did well," Rynard said. "Sanders now takes a lot of the white working-class precincts. And Clinton is in some cases dominating in well-off, more established neighborhood precincts."
Sanders wins metros, except for Des Moines
Clinton likely owes her victory to the Des Moines metro. She took Polk County, the largest county in the state, by a solid 7 percentage points and racked up even bigger margins in exurban Dallas (nearly 16 percentage points) and Warren counties (12 percentage points).
Those three metro counties together accounted for 150 of Clinton’s delegates — 21 percent of her statewide total.
Beyond that, though, Sanders carried urban Iowa: He captured seven of the state’s 10 largest counties encompassing seven of its largest cities. That includes Iowa City, Ames and Cedar Falls — the university communities where he was expected to dominate — but also Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City and Council Bluffs. He carried Woodbury County, home to Sioux City, by 7 points and Linn County, home to Cedar Rapids, by almost 5.
The races in Iowa City and Ames –— homes to the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, respectively — were blowouts: Sanders trounced Clinton within city limits and won each county by 19 percentage points. He won the University of Northern Iowa’s Black Hawk County by more than 6 points. Those three counties represented 118 of Sanders’ delegates — 17 percent of his total.
Judge, a former Iowa secretary of agriculture and lieutenant governor, says his heavy support in college towns comes as no surprise.
"But I am somewhat surprised at the strength in some of those other areas," she said. "But again, I'm going to tell you that they were organizing just as fervently I believe as Barack Obama did eight years ago, leaving no stone unturned. And that pays off. You can't take people for granted. They were out talking to people, they put together a very strong grassroots campaign, and it worked for them.
Rania Batrice, spokeswoman for Sanders' Iowa campaign, said staffers were still examining results Monday afternoon. The Sanders campaign has not ceded victory and is seeking a review of paper caucus records from individual precincts. But Batrice said Sanders' strong finish in college towns was even better than projected, and he won rural areas that staffers didn't believe would be in play.
"We’re still sorting through everything, of course," she said. "But we did better than even expected where we thought we would do well. And we over-performed in rural areas and Latino areas."
Sanders organization stronger than expected
Year-end spending reports filed this week show an intensified focus on Iowa by the Sanders campaign in the final months before caucusing, reflecting increased advertising and an expanded organization. His campaign spent $1.03 million in Iowa between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31. That's about twice what he spent in the second and third quarters combined. And it's the most any candidate, Republican or Democrat, spent in Iowa the fourth quarter.
Clinton by comparison spent about $651,000 in Iowa during the fourth quarter. For the year, Sanders' campaign invested about $1.6 million in wooing Iowa voters, about $100,000 more than Clinton.
"I definitely think the Sanders operation was better than what many believed," Rynard said. "Part of that was that their campaign kept a lot of that close to the vest."
But organization isn't everything. Sanders, riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment, capitalized on enthusiasm among disaffected voters. In one Des Moines precinct, about three-quarters of Sanders' supporters were first-time caucusgoers.
The Clinton campaign declined to be interviewed for this story. But Iowa's state treasurer and early Clinton backer Michael Fitzgerald weighed in on Clinton's organizational strength. While she was criticized for underestimating what it would take to win Iowa in 2008, Clinton freely infused cash and people to create an effective political machine this go around, Fitzgerald said.
"She took it serous. She was close to the people who were working the campaign here in Iowa. She was talking to folks all across the state, addressing their concerns," he said. "And she spent a lot of time out here. That paid off. It took a lot."
Still, Sanders' strength on the ground was a shock.
"I didn’t think Bernie could come that close," Fitzgerald said.
— Data editor Jeffrey Kummer contributed to this story.