Friends -
Thank you, Iowa!
A short while ago in Manchester, New Hampshire, I held a press conference that should have occurred three nights ago in Des Moines, Iowa — but for the unfortunate inability of the Iowa Democratic Party to count votes in a timely fashion. That screw up has been extremely unfair to the people of Iowa, the candidates and all of their supporters.
So what I want to do today, three days late, is to thank the people of Iowa for the very strong victory they gave us at the Iowa caucuses on Monday night.
Even though the vote tabulations have been very slow, we are now at a point where 97 percent of the votes have been counted and we are winning the popular initial vote by some 6,000 votes.
In other words, some 6,000 more Iowans came out on caucus night to support our candidacy than the candidacy of any other candidate.
And when 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your next nearest opponent, we call that a victory.
In a contest with voter turnout of approximately 180,000, and with eight strong candidates competing, a victory margin of some 6,000 is decisive.
Further, in Iowa there is a realignment process whereby people who supported a candidate with less than 15% in the room can cast a vote in a second round for a different candidate. In that post-realignment vote we are ahead by over 2,500 votes.
And the reason that happened is because of the unprecedented grassroots effort of our campaign.
Thousands of volunteers knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors in the cold and snow. And I want to thank each and every volunteer who participated in that effort, and to thank all of our grassroots campaign contributors whose financial support made that victory possible.
And now that Iowa is finally behind us, let me take this opportunity to thank the thousands of volunteers we have here in New Hampshire who are working so hard to bring us to victory. They are knocking on doors, they are making phone calls, they are doing all the things that lead to a winning campaign.
But I need your help if we are to finish the job, win in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, and take our victories into Super Tuesday.
Now as everyone knows, the Iowa process is enormously complicated. In my view, far too complicated.
As it stands right now either myself or Mr. Buttigieg will end with a tiny fraction of an advantage in the State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs).
Given the remaining precincts outstanding, and mathematical errors which we are discovering in the data, we could well end up with more SDEs. But this difference, no matter who inches ahead in the end, is meaningless because we are both likely to receive the same number of national delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.
So now we are in New Hampshire, where we are fighting hard to win. As in Iowa, we have thousands of volunteers working hard which is precisely what the political revolution is all about.
Thank you so much for your support, let’s go forward together.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
Paid for by Bernie 2020
PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
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