DES MOINES, Iowa — A senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign released what it said was internal numbers with partial results from Monday's Iowa caucuses as reporting issues and a mobile app rollout delayed official numbers.
The problem created frustrations for voters and campaigns as the first-in-the-nation contest was initially unable to declare a winner. Much of the blame was placed on a mobile app that organizers say wasn't tested until hours before the caucuses began. The app was the tool caucus locations were told to use to report their results to the state party. Caucus secretaries were relegated to calling in their results, delaying the final results into Tuesday.
Sanders senior adviser Jeff Weaver said the numbers it was reporting early Tuesday morning represented nearly 40% of precincts in Iowa. Weaver said the results were collected by trained Sanders volunteers. The precincts represented all four congressional districts and both rural and urban locations. Weaver said.
The results the Sanders campaign reported had Sanders in the lead with 29.66% of the vote.
Former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg was second with 24.59%. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was third with 21.24%, according to the Sanders campaign. Former Vice President Joe Biden with 12.37% and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., with 11% rounded out the top five. No other candidates had more than 0.9%.
Again, these are not official results from the Iowa Democratic Party.
"We recognize that this does not replace the full data from the Iowa Democratic Party, but we believe firmly that our supporters worked too hard for too long to have the results of that work delayed," Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign, said in a statement.
Before that release by the Sanders campaign, the senator spoke to supporters at a rally and appeared positive about the potential results.
"Let me begin by stating that I imagine you have a strong feeling that at some point the results will be announced. And when those results are announced, I have a good feeling we're going to be doing very, very well," Sanders said.