Pete Buttigieg held a steady lead in the delegate race and Bernie Sanders maintained his edge in the popular vote Wednesday as the latest badly delayed results trickled in from the disastrous Iowa Democratic caucuses.
Nearly two days after Iowa Democrats gathered, the new vote counts showed little change from earlier vote dumps, solidifying both candidates' narrow leads in various metrics.
With 86% of precincts now reporting, Buttigieg held 26.7% of so-called state delegate equivalents compared to 25.4% for Sanders. Elizabeth Warren remained in third place with 18.3%, followed by Joe Biden with 15.9% and Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 12.1%.
Sanders kept up his lead in the popular vote, besting Buttigieg by a decent 3% margin in voters' first choices and a much tighter margin after voters for lesser candidates were allowed to change their preference.
Both leading candidates are seen as scooping at least 11 of Iowa's 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Warren is expected to get five and Biden may not get any due to rules requiring candidates to clear a hurdle of at least 15% to get any delegates.
Analysts say the remaining votes do not appear to be in dramatically different areas in the state than those that have been released so far, suggesting there will be no major surprises in the precincts that remain outstanding.
Democratic officials blame the results-reporting debacle on an app that apparently malfunctioned.
The Iowa Democratic Party has not explained why it has taken so long to tabulate the results even after the app crashed on election night. Officials have offered no timetable for releasing the outstanding results, even though local officials say they long ago sent the full verified caucus results to party vote-counters.
The caucus meltdown has virtually united Democrats against allowing Iowa to retain its first-in-the-nation status in the contest's current form. Even without the app disaster, critics say the caucus process is fundamentally undemocratic and note that Iowa and first primary state New Hampshire are among the least diverse states.
