UPDATE: Bernie Sanders is claiming victory in the Iowa caucuses, though the race officially remains too close to call and the Democratic National Committee chairman has called for a recanvass. Incomplete state party results show Pete Buttigieg with a slight lead in the state delegate count.
"Even though the vote tabulations have been extremely slow, we are now at a point with some 97 percent of the precincts reporting where our campaign is winning the popular initial vote by some 6,000 votes," Sanders told reporters at his New Hampshire headquarters Thursday. "And 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."
The leader of the Democratic National Committee called for an immediate recanvass of the Iowa caucuses Thursday, dealing another blow to Iowa’s reputation and further extending an already delayed process to tally votes from Monday night.
“Enough is enough,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez tweeted Thursday afternoon. “In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.”
The call for a recanvass comes after the public release of the results has been delayed for days, with reports of errors and inconsistencies in the results.
Perez also wrote that he expects the state Democratic Party to continue to report results as the recanvass is ongoing.
Monday’s initial delay in reporting results was caused, in part, by the failure of a mobile phone app built by the company Shadow, slowing the collection of results. Two Democratic Party leaders told POLITICO that the initial collection of results — which Perez is now calling for a recanvass of — was further delayed because some precinct captains in Iowa put presidential preference cards and delegate math sheets, which were part of the paper-backup system, in the mail as they were initially instructed to do so, unaware of other reporting problems.
But once results started trickling in, reports of inconsistencies arose. An analysis from The New York Times on Thursday, published after about 97 percent of precincts' results have been reported, found that “more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses.”
The first results, which were expected to start being released late Monday night, did not start coming out until early Tuesday evening.
Before Perez’s announcement, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were virtually tied at 26 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting. Buttigieg led in percentage of state delegate equivalents by just one-tenth of a percentage point, but Sanders led in the popular vote by more than 2,500 votes.
The Associated Press said the race was too close to call.
The request for a recanvass increases the likelihood that no one will know for certain who won Iowa before top candidates take the stage Friday night for their next debate in New Hampshire, which holds its primary Tuesday.
Laura Barrón-López contributed to this report.