Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigning last week in Indianola, Iowa Credit: File: Paul Heintz

Updated at 2:37 p.m.

Three days after the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) declared Thursday that he had won a “very strong victory” in the first presidential contest.

Speaking at a press conference in Manchester, N.H., Sanders played down the importance of the final delegate allocation and focused instead on the number of votes cast at the start of the caucusing process. By that metric, according to incomplete results available Thursday, he led former mayor Pete Buttigieg by 5,954 votes, or 24.7 percent to 21.3 percent.

“When 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your nearest opponent, we here in northern New England call that a victory,” Sanders said.

With 97 percent of precincts counted, Buttigieg was leading Sanders in state delegate equivalents by 550 to 547, or 26.2 percent to 26.1 percent. Those are used to determine how many of Iowa’s 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention are allocated.

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At Thursday’s press conference, Sanders chastised “the cable news and political pundits” for spending “so much time pontificating about” the state delegate equivalent count. He called Buttigieg’s slight lead “meaningless” because the two would likely win the same number of delegates to the convention. That outcome, he said, “ain’t gonna change. And what certainly is not going to change is the fact that, in terms of the popular vote, we won a decisive victory.”

Sanders began his remarks by criticizing the Iowa Democratic Party for failing to quickly and accurately tally the results of Monday’s caucuses. “That screwup has been extremely unfair to the people of Iowa,” he said. “It has been unfair to the candidates — all of the candidates — and all of their supporters.”

The senator also slammed the Democratic National Committee for a recent rules change that will likely allow former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to take part in an upcoming debate. “I think it is an outrage,” he said. “Look, rules are rules.”

Other candidates, such as former housing secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, had “played by the rules” and were excluded from later debates, he said. But, referring to Bloomberg’s immense wealth, “I guess if you’re worth $55 billion, you can get the rules changed for a debate.”

Earlier Thursday, Sanders’ campaign announced that it had raised $25 million in January in the form of 1.3 million donations from 648,000 people. More than 219,000 of them had not previously donated to the campaign. In total, the campaign has raised $121 million from more than 1.5 million people since Sanders joined the race last February.

Even as Sanders campaigns in New Hampshire ahead of next Tuesday’s primary, he is looking ahead to the 14 states that vote March 3 on Super Tuesday.

His campaign announced Thursday that it was increasing staffing levels and investing $5.5 million in television advertising in 10 of those states: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. That’s on top of the $2.5 million it announced last week in TV ad spending in California and Texas.

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Paul Heintz was part of the Seven Days news team from 2012 to 2020. He served as political editor and wrote the "Fair Game" political column before becoming a staff writer.

9 replies on “Sanders Declares ‘Very Strong Victory’ as Iowa Results Tighten”

  1. Now Perez wants a recount in Iowa to further screw Sanders.

    Are Democrats really this damn incompetent?

    Are Democrat voters going to stand for this?

    Are Vermonters Democrat leaders going to continue to hide from this ongoing catastrophe or will they find their voice?

  2. So the Dear Leader declared a “very strong victory” in Iowa.

    First, what is a “strong” victory? Is that like a “strong and powerful wall”?

    Second, how can you possibly declare a “very strong victory” when you’re actually tied with another candidate?

    More Trumpi-ness from Bernie.

  3. Debbie and Donna were much better at fixing the results against Bernie in the last election until the WikiLeaks DNC Email leaks came out and it was clear Debbie had bias against Bernie and had to resign and then Donna Brazile got caught sneaking those debate questions out of CNN’s studios for Hillary to cheat against Bernie and they got caught again stacking the deck against Bernie.
    This time will be different though..

  4. Like here in Burlington politics a lot of the times the Left Hand has no idea what the Far Left Hand is up to in Iowa

  5. It’s good that the complaints from Bernie’s 2016 campaign were incorporated into tallying results in Iowa this time.

    Too bad Shadow, Inc is run by a former Clintonite. He’s the developer of the app.

    And then there’s Mayor Pete’s sibling in a relationship with someone at Shadow.

    Coincidence? I report, you decide.

    Told ya, this is going to be great!

  6. Using an app was a bad idea, not sure whose idea that was but clearly the Iowa Democratic Committee thought it would help. Time to get back to paper and pencil, one person/one vote. I don’t care if it takes a week to accurately count the votes. You can’t hack paper. Some Vermonters take Bernie for granted and don’t realize how many people across this great nation have been fans of his for a very long time, ever since C-Span began televising the federal legislature proceedings. Like Howard Dean said, Bernie is not to be underestimated. He’s a smart guy, he knows what he’s doing. He’s not about to allow a repeat of 2016, and neither are we.

  8. I see the Bernie Bros are out this morning. Its just amazing that these people have done nothing but spew hate and scorn against actual Democrats for several years but if their Messiah wins the nomination they will be looking for us to unite behind him and vote for him. Not bloody likely. Im betting that Sanders supporters have divided the party so much that no matter who wins the Democratic nomination, Trump will skate to victory. I hope thats not the case but if it happens, the Bernie Brigade have no one but themselves to blame.

  9. THE AYATOLLAH OF BURLINGTON VERMONT HAS SPOKEN !

    VICTORY IN IOWA HAS BEEN DECLARED !

    …even though all the votes have not been counted yet,.

    How does that saying go? Horse before carriage?

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