Nontraditional Voters at IOWA Satellite Caucuses Could Tip the Balance to Bernie Sanders

Ryan Grim
February 5 2020, 5:19 p.m.

Excerpt:

In all, there were 87 satellite caucuses. According to Iowa Democratic Party rules, the total delegate value of those caucuses will be determined by satellite turnout and in proportion to the total number of people who came out to vote in the regular caucuses. They are to be worth some percent of the total, meaning that the four delegates Sanders won in Ottumwa, for instance, could actually rise or shrink in the final analysis. But what we know about those caucuses suggests that Sanders may have won those caucuses by enough to overcome his deficit with Buttigieg, which at the time of writing sits at 23.987 delegates with 86 percent of the precincts reporting.

Jeff Weaver, a senior campaign adviser, said at a Sanders rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday night that he remained optimistic about winning not just the popular vote, but also the delegate count, citing success in the satellite caucuses. “If you look at satellite caucuses — we don’t have final numbers yet — if you look at new Latino voters coming out in Iowa, new Muslim voters coming out in Iowa, caucus sites in union halls, that’s part of this expansion of the electorate. It takes a while, but I’m very proud of the work we did helping underrepresented communities get represented in the caucus,” Weaver said.

https://theintercept.com/2020/02/05/bernie-sanders-iowa-satelllite-caucuses/