The Iowa state GOP says their certified results show Rick Santorum winning by a 34-vote margin over Mitt Romney, a reversal of Romney’s reported caucus night lead of 8 votes — but the party has nevertheless called the result a “split decision,” citing the matter of 8 missing precincts. But those precincts aren’t really missing.
“I can’t speculate without documentation from the missing eight,” Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn told the Des Moines Register. “The comments I made at 1:30 a.m. Jan. 4 congratulating both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum still apply. I don’t think the certified vote totals take anything away from either Governor Romney or Senator Santorum.”
But the results that were reported on caucus night by the state GOP are still online, and the party provided TPM the link on request. And for those precincts, we can get an idea of how Santorum and Romney performed against each other. Of course, we should remain aware that there still could be a typo in these numbers — but on the other hand, the probabilities strongly favor them being accurate for both Santorum and Romney, as errors that do occur (if at all) could have been spread across the other candidates, as well.
And as it turns out, when incorporating the numbers from election night, Santorum’s lead actually becomes even wider.
Precinct officials phone or e-mail in their results on the night of the caucus. However, as was noted when the first error in Santorum’s favor was discovered, the process invariably involves some human error. Whether it’s accidentally double-tapping the “2” on a keyboard, as in the case of that one mistake, or flipping digits around, there can be any number of typos made on a late night. Thus, the party’s certification of the results.
The official certified results are supposed to be submitted on the original document that the local precinct officials wrote the totals, which is called a “Form E.”
But in the case of these eight missing precincts, the original “Form E” was lost. As such, no votes at all have been included for those precincts in the certified totals.
The precincts were:
⢠Cerro Gordo County: Mason City W2 P3
⢠Emmet County: Estherville, W2
⢠Franklin County: Geneva/Reeve
⢠Lee County: Fort Madison 4A, Fort Madison 4B, Franklin Cedar Marion, and Washington Green Bay Denmark
⢠Pocahontas County: Center-S Roosevelt-N Lincoln (Note, that is the designated name of a single precinct.)
In those precincts, based on the reported caucus night results, Santorum received a total of 81 votes, to Romney’s 46.
If those results are added to the certified results, Santorum’s 29,839 votes would become 29,920, and Romney’ 29,805 would become 29,851 — for a “final” result of Santorum winning the caucuses, by a margin of 69 votes.
We’re investigating whether there’s any precedent in past Iowa caucus votes for discounting votes altogether when the certified forms are lost. We’ll update when we know more.
