#MayorCheat? More like the mayor to beat! After an entire day of ire directed toward Pete Buttigieg for his preemptive declaration of victory in the Iowa caucuses, the foible-ridden Iowa Democratic Party published 62% of precinct results, showing the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor hauling in the most delegates so far.
Although Buttigieg won 1,000 fewer raw votes than Bernie Sanders in reporting precincts, he bested the primary pack in share of state delegates, with 26.9% to Sanders’s 25.1%. But more remarkable than his delegate share is how he won them over — and perhaps more importantly, how he compared with the other moderates.
Whereas Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (who came in third in state delegate share) only increased their votes by about 1,000 from the first to second alignments, Buttigieg gained a whopping 3,364 votes. Most critically, Amy Klobuchar lost a few hundred, and Joe Biden lost more than an astounding 2,000 votes.
The 37-year-old former mayor of the 306th largest city in the country is still a long shot candidate. But the available data shows that he proved in Iowa the most pivotal point of his candidacy: that he’s more electable than other moderates.
