Iowa...

[RowdyRebel]

So I'm sitting here in a restaurant grabbing a bite to eat, and they have CNN on the TV. I find it odd that they have vote totals and percentages for the GOP candidates...but only percentages for the dems. Wondering why...could it be the Dems have a pathetic turnout and the GOP caucuses are packed? I'm kinda curious how many votes the indictment waiting to happen is getting vs the socialist...and how their vote totals match up with the various GOP contenders. It'd be kinda sad if our last place guy got as many votes as their top candidate...maybe that's why they aren't giving dem vote totals?

[RowdyRebel]

They sure are spending a lot of time talking about the democrat race...and then a blurb about the republicans before spending another 10 minutes on the democrats. Checked the Fox News website and they have the vote totals for all of the candidates...and I was right. It is a pretty close race between their top candidates and our last place ones.

[HeavyGunner]

Let's hope those poll numbers are right and MAYBE we will get started on the long, long way back to being the great capitalist country where workers far out weigh the free loaders.

[m16ty]

Just keep in mind that primary totals and turnout don't really give much indication of what will happen in the general election. It could be that the republican race is just a more contested race than the democrats.

Fox just reported that Cruz wins, Trump just barely beats out Rubio. Sanders and Clinton in a dead heat.

[m16ty]

Something can't be right.

Fox has Cruz with 46,000 votes, Sanders 628, Clinton 633.

Surely there's no way that 46K voted for Cruz and only 1,261 votes for both Clinton and Sanders.

I know Democrats are a dying breed but surely there are more than 1,261 democrats in the state of Iowa that will get their lazy butt off the couch and go vote.

[thomastractorsvc]

They caucus differently by party

[kscarbel2]

Hillary Clinton pushed to the limit as Iowa caucuses offer night of high drama

The Guardian / February 2, 2016

Democratic race against Bernie Sanders too close to call but Republican Ted Cruz humbles Donald Trump in first contest of US presidential campaign

Hillary Clinton was given the fright of her life as veteran socialist senator Bernie Sanders pushed her to the limit in the Iowa caucus, on a night of extreme drama in the first test of the US presidential election year.

Ted Cruz, the maverick Texas senator, used his formidable ground game to beat the bombastic property tycoon Donald Trump into second place in the Republican race.

And with Florida senator Marco Rubio enjoying a strong night in third place, the congested Republican field could yet be reshaped as a head-to-head between two Cuban Americans vying to become the first Latino president of the United States.

Yet it was in the Democratic race where the closest of finishes caused high anxiety in the Clinton camp. With more than 99% of the precinct results in, Clinton led 49.9% to 49.6% over Sanders after seeing an apparently comfortable lead slip. The Associated Press and multiple outlets said the race was simply too close to call.

Both candidates will now move on to New Hampshire buoyed up, Clinton with a “sigh of relief” that her bid to be the first female president of the United States is alive, and Sanders believing that his revolution against the “billionaire classes” truly began in the snowy cornfields of Iowa.

With half of the results in across the rural midwest state, Clinton appeared to be easing to victory, three points up on the Vermont senator, whose relatively ramshackle campaign seemed to be no match for her mighty political machine.

But as the night wore on, Clinton’s lead shrank to two and then one point, until she was locked in a virtual tie with the 74-year-old whose passion has ignited a fervour among young Americans.

Appearing onstage in Des Moines before the final tally arrived, Clinton hailed “a contest of ideas” and appeared battle-ready for the fight of her political life.

She congratulated her opponent, saying: “I am excited about really getting into the debate with Senator Sanders about the best way forward to fight for us in America.”

The democratic socialist, though, had clearly stolen the momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary on 9 February – and a prolonged fight appears inevitable, a far cry from what had been envisaged as a graceful procession toward the nomination for Clinton.

By almost 11pm local time, the two Democratic rivals had both given what sounded like competing victory speeches.

Sanders raised the roof as he told supporters: “While the results are still not known, it looks like we are in virtual tie,” adding: “The people of Iowa have sent a very profound message to the political establishment, the economic establishment, and by the way to the media establishment.”

Largely written off by both the media and Democratic leaders, Sanders has been attracting huge crowds across the state since he first started campaigning here in the summer and made Clinton’s poll leads that reached as high as 32% all but evaporate.

Late on Monday night in Des Moines, a crowd at Sanders’ victory party was watching him inch to within 0.2 percentage points down, to a tie on the television overhead, then back down to 0.2 points. Someone put on Sanders’ fight song – the Simon & Garfunkel anthem America. “They’ve all come to look for America,” sang the throng.

Iowa proved Bernie Sanders can win – and that Hillary Clinton is beatable | Lucia Graves

Across town at the Clinton event, the former first lady, secretary of state and senator was introduced by retired Iowa senator Tom Harkin and his wife Ruth, both popular figures who endorsed Clinton last summer.

Harkin embraced what he said was a “narrow” victory for Clinton, even as the results were still being counted. “Hey, folks, a win is a win!” he exclaimed.

Clinton herself stopped short of declaring victory as she took the stage, flanked by husband Bill and daughter Chelsea, before a crowd of roughly 700 supporters.

“Wow, what a night, an unbelievable night,” she said. “Now, as I stand here tonight breathing a sigh of relief – thank you.”

At times the cheers so deafening they drowned out Clinton’s words. It was an outright celebration, however narrow the result, of a candidate who eight years ago suffered a bruising defeat in the same state at the hands of Barack Obama.

This time, she will head to New Hampshire having hit her stride – campaigning laboriously for every vote.

Last time she slipped to third in Iowa behind Obama and John Edwards. As midnight approached, with 50 of the 1,683 precincts still to declare, Clinton led 49.9% to 49.6%. However, rumours began to circulate that some of the results were in dispute and that the Democratic party had failed to staff 90 caucuses, raising the prospect of an ugly clash between the Clinton and Sanders camps.

In the Republican contest, it was a predictably chastening night for Jeb Bush, the candidate with all of the money and the presidential lineage who has been diminished by the taunts of Donald Trump saying he is “low energy”.

Bush barely registered, in sixth place on 2.8% behind retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson in fourth and libertarian Rand Paul in fifth.

But the Republican night belonged to Cruz, who called it “a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa and all across this great nation”, vowing that the Republican nominee for 2016 “will not be chosen by the Washington establishment”.

If the taming of Trump was a surprise – Cruz picked up the most votes ever in a Republican Iowa caucus – there is also a warning from history. In the last seven contested national caucuses, they have chosen the eventual nominee only three times.

Donald Trump gave a rare display of humility during a brief speech at a hotel in West Des Moines.

“We finished second and I want to tell you seriously I am honoured,” he said, making a point to “congratulate Ted”.

After months of crowing about how he was destined to win, he immediately moved to reframe expectations, saying that he had been warned “do not to go to Iowa. You could never finish even in the top 10”.

“We’re just so happy about the way everything turned out,” he added.

However, the mood at Donald Trump’s party in western Des Moines went from subdued when it emerged he had been pushed into second place by Cruz, to outright downbeat when it became apparent he had been almost tied by third-place Rubio.

A defiant Rubio echoed the words of Barack Obama in 2008 when he took the stage at his caucus night party in Des Moines. “So this is the moment they said would never happen. For months, they told us we had no chance,” Rubio told a raucous crowd inside a ballroom at the downtown Marriott.

“They told me I needed to wait my turn. They told me we had no chance because my hair wasn’t gray enough and my boots were too high,” he said, referring to a minor media storm about his Cuban heel boots. “But tonight, here in Iowa, the people of this great state have sent a very clear message after seven years of Barack Obama we are not waiting any longer,” he added.

If Rubio can lead the establishment crowd in New Hampshire, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Jeb Bush will be all but done and he may come through the middle as a youthful alternative. Cruz is deeply unpopular in his own party and Trump is diminished if not yet vanquished.

“Ground game, ground game, ground game” was the reason that Cruz’s Iowa’s co- chair Matt Schultz gave for his candidate’s triumph. Cruz staffers had long been supremely confident that they had the resources on the ground to triumph and felt confident that they had done everything right.

Unlike Trump, their candidate had visited all 99 counties and built up what was universally acknowledged to be the best field organisation of any candidate.

The mood at the Cruz party was jubilant. A cover band played rock and country music as attendees slowly started to grasp their achievement in winning the caucuses. The crowd’s enthusiasm barely flagged as Cruz spoke for about 25 minutes to the assembled audience at the Elwell building on the grounds of the Iowa state fair.

In an interview on caucus day, Cruz’s state director, Bryan English, told the Guardian that their organisation “was a model”.

“It’s an organic process … go straight to people, meeting them where they are, in twos, threes, and fives, then dozens, hundreds and thousands … It’s not through paid media, not through direct mail, but through person to person relationship building.”

The two casualties of the night were Martin O’Malley, who dropped out of the Democratic race, and Mike Huckabee, who suspended his Republican campaign.

[RowdyRebel]

A defiant Rubio echoed the words of Barack Obama in 2008 when he took the stage at his caucus night party in Des Moines.

Ouch. Comparing Rubio to Obama like that isn't doing him any favors. NOBODY wants to "echo" Obama on ANYTHING...unless, of course, you're a crusty old socialist.

[ranchhopper]

The larger problem as I see it is all the disenchanted young college age voters who put Obama in office have switched to voting for Sanders not a good thing in my book.

[41chevy]

The larger problem as I see it is all the disenchanted young college age voters who put Obama in office have switched to voting for Sanders not a good thing in my book.

Sanders in my opinion is as bad or worst than Obama in some aspects, being a Communist Socialist Progressive Liberal Marxist. The Gen X 'es like him because he also promises more social programs like free healthcare, free college, $15 per hour minimum wage, subsidized housing and utilities. Go back to some of his speeches in the past year, it is scary how progressive some of what he spoke about. Want it? Work for it!

[RowdyRebel]

If you're 20 and not liberal, you have no heart. If you're 30 and not conservative, you have no brain. Free stuff is all well and good while you're young and on the receiving end. Then you get a little older and want to start working...only to find that the $15/hr minimum wage essentially set a $15/hr maximum wage too because if the employer MUST pay the otherwise useless broom pusher $15/hr, there isn't money left to pay the production staff what they would otherwise be worth...and the broom pusher jobs aren't as plentiful anymore either because if he's got to pay the broom pusher as much as his producers are making, there really isn't any reason to keep broom pushers on the payroll. Then, if they're lucky enough to HAVE a job, they discover that such a large chunk of that $15/hr is being confiscated by the government in the form of taxes...because SOMEBODY has to pay for all that "free" $#!+ you so willingly voted for. So, you're essentially worse off than you would have been making student loan payments and working a $6/hr job with hopes of moving up the pay ladder as you developed some job skills. First thing we learned in economics class back in high school was "TINSTAAFL"...THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH! Somebody somewhere had to pay the tab. I'd much rather pay my own way, and let everybody else do the same. Right to pursue happiness is not the right to be happy. If you're too lazy to pursue your own happiness, why should I have to put my own pursuit on hold to pay for what you think might make you happy? Why should your happiness get a higher priority than my pursuit...when I'm the one expected to pay for it? Screw that. You pay for you. I'll pay for me. If you're lazy and end up miserable as a result, NOT MY PROBLEM!

[kscarbel2]

Iowa Caucus entrance poll results

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/primaries/iowa-entrance-poll/?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_clinton-banner-145am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

[kscarbel2]

CNN / February 3, 2016

Hillary Clinton claimed victory in the Iowa caucuses Tuesday after topping Democratic rival Bernie Sanders by the skin-of-her-teeth margin of 49.9% to 49.6%.

There's been some confusion about how much of a role coin flips played in determining who won delegates.

Coin flips -- specifically "games of chance" -- are used in circumstances at precinct caucuses to adjudicate ties or resolve issues created by rounding errors. At stake at these precinct-level coin flips is the one remaining slot in that precinct for a campaign to send a delegate to attend that precinct's county convention.

Coin flips are not used to decide which candidate wins a state convention delegate or national convention delegate.

How many coin flips were there on Monday night?

The Iowa Democratic Party does not have comprehensive records on how many coin flips/games of chance were held Monday evening [how convenient to say]. However, they do have partial records.

More than half of the 1,681 Democratic caucuses held Monday night used a new Microsoft reporting app. Of those, there were exactly seven county delegates determined by coin flip. The remaining precincts did not use the Microsoft app, and instead used traditional phone-line reporting to transmit results. In these precincts, there no are records of how many coin flips occurred [hmmm]. There's only anecdotal information on these precincts.

Who won these coin flips?

Of the seven coin flips/games of chance that were held in precincts using the Microsoft app, six of those were flips to determine whether a county delegate slot went to Clinton or Sanders. Of those six Clinton-vs.-Sanders coin flips, Sanders won five and Clinton one.

The seventh coin flip was used to determine whether a county delegate slot went to Sanders or Martin O'Malley. Sanders won that coin flip as well. So in the seven coin flips that the Iowa Democratic Party has a record of, Sanders won six of them.

So it's incorrect to say that Clinton won every coin flip.

As for the less-than-half of the precincts that didn't use the Microsoft app, it's unclear how many coin flips took place [why?]. Only anecdotal information is available on these flips, such as web videos that circulated Monday night.

Did Clinton win the Iowa caucuses thanks to coin flips?

Clinton won the Iowa caucuses by the equivalent of about four state delegates. If the anecdotal evidence of Clinton winning six coin flips is correct, she would have won six county delegates through coin flips (setting aside the fact that party records show Sanders also won six county delegates as a result of coin flips). There is not a one-to-one correlation between county delegates and state delegates, or to national convention delegates.

Based on the party's delegate selection rules, a single county delegate represents a tiny fraction of a state convention delegate (the exact ratio is difficult to calculate because it varies from county to county).

Norm Sterzenbach, the former executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party who oversaw the party's 2008 and 2012 Iowa caucuses, told CNN:

"I can say with “almost absolute certainty” this election would not have been changed because of the coin flips [“almost” and “absolute certainty”......in the same sentence]. It would take a very large number of these to make that kind of impact, and one candidate would have to win them all. Our empirical evidence and anecdotal information shows that one candidate didn't win them all, and that coin flips are not that frequent."

Sterzenbach has worked with the Iowa caucuses since 2000. He is not aligned with any 2016 campaign, has not endorsed a candidate, and did not caucus for any 2016 candidate [take CNN’s word for it – trust him].

He says that four state delegate equivalents may seem like a small amount, but that it would take "a lot" of county delegates to amount to four state delegates. Sterzenbach said based on his recollection [remember, they purposely don’t keep comprehensive records], there seemed to have been more instances of coin flips being held in 2008 than in 2016.

[Gmerrill0516]

Everything is free in America...Didn't you all get the memo? Bernie's adds should be shorter..."I'm going to take all the money and give it to YOU." Simple...and accurate. If the communist or the felon to be get in the office, America is definitely screwed. All of us "BAD" people who work and make money should be ashamed. It's not fair, it's rigged....AHHHHHH!!!!

[RowdyRebel]

I got into an argument with a friend of a friend several years ago. He was trying to tell me "there are no jobs". Sure there are...help wanted signs up all over town! "I shouldn't HAVE to work one of THOSE jobs...I have a college degree!". OK then, what did you study? "Graphic design.". So get a job in that field! "I can't...I don't have a laptop.". Ok, so get a job you CAN get, save your money, buy a laptop, and then go after the job you want! "I shouldn't have to...America is supposed to be a free country...". You're FREE to PURSUE happiness...doesn't mean your happiness should be handed to you for free. Dumbass.

[41chevy]

The last prima dona I fired had the same attitude. I told him to grab a broom and sweep off the driveway entrance at a job we just finished. He told me he was a driver not a janitor. I told him I pay him an hourly wage he can do what ever is needed to be done, which followed be the same line" I don't get paid to sweep". I own the company and I SWEEP if it is needed, empty the trash what ever need doing, so can you! Told me flat out no. Well guess what? You don't get paid at all! When he applied for unemployment I told them he refused to do a job and I fired him... no unemployment for him.

Shovel crap if you get paid for it. Work is work.

[m16ty]

"I shouldn't have to...America is supposed to be a free country...". You're FREE to PURSUE happiness...doesn't mean your happiness should be handed to you for free. Dumbass.

So I guess he took the phrase "free country" to mean everything is free.

[41chevy]

So I guess he took the phrase "free country" to mean everything is free.

Unless you are a Working, Christian , Conservative Male.