Jason Clayworth

The Des Moines Register

DES MOINES — Iowa’s 2016 caucus attendance was a doozy.

Republicans counted more than 180,000 caucusgoers, topping their 2012 attendance record of 121,503 by an estimated 60,000 people.

And while Democratic numbers weren’t completely tallied at the time of this posting, all indications pointed to a robust performance, although not likely to top the roughly 240,000 total who showed up in 2008 to vote for a Democratic rock-star field led by Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.

The turnouts shunned conventional wisdom that high participation would equate to a Donald Trump victory, said Kedron Bardwell, the chairman of the political science department at Simpson College.

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“It’s not what people were expecting in terms of what would happen if we had an increased turnout,” Bardwell said. “This is a dynamic kind of effect. If people anticipate that Trump is going to win, it also motivates the people that want anybody but Trump.”

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said he is "very, very proud of my fellow citizens" for the record turnout.

"If there was ever a doubt that the people of Iowa believe in grass-roots democracy, I think tonight that doubt is completely erased,” Kaufmann said.

Some caucusgoers reported delays due to crowds.

At least one Democratic voter precinct at Iowa State University initially ran out of voter registration papers, according to a report from Betsy Woodruff, a reporter for The Daily Beast. At other sites, caucusgoers tweeted photos of site officials printing more ballots.

Brad Anderson, a Democrat and former candidate for secretary of state, reported that his caucus site at Perkins Elementary in Des Moines was so full that people “we’re getting kicked out into the parking lot.”

A downtown precinct at the Des Moines Social Club was delayed due to hundreds of people waiting in line. At around 7:15 p.m. the overflow was being herded into the facility’s basement. The actual caucus didn’t start until after 7:30 p.m when the count was 469 people, 300 more than organizers had expected.

Thomas Bakke, who caucused at the East Elementary gymnasium, was at a site where organizers discovered they had forgotten to have attendees sign in. Bakke estimated around 150 people were at the site.

Bakke admitted to being frustrated.

“We’re 40 minutes in and people are still trying to figure out how to sign in and get started,” he said.

Some GOP sites also experienced a deluge of caucusgoers. The St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in West Des Moines, for example, had a line that extended around the building 10 minutes before the caucuses began.

Part of the St. Francis excitement was caused by candidates Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina both being in attendance, both speaking before the crowd.

All 500 chairs in the sanctuary were filled and hundreds more stood in the aisles or atrium.

“I've worked this a bunch of times before and this is more people than I have ever seen,” said Flora Schmidt, a member of the Dallas County GOP who was working registration at the site.

A lot was is on the line for Iowa to get it right. In 2012 Mitt Romney was initially announced as the winner of the Iowa GOP caucuses by eight votes. But a final tally showed that Rick Santorum won by 34 votes, even though officials acknowledged there were too many holes in the certified total to know for certain who won. Matt Strawn, then party chairman, resigned from his post shortly after.

Accuracy is critical because winners build momentum from the first-in-the-nation caucuses and errors have the potential of changing the course of history.

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In hopes of heading off any future reporting problems, both the Iowa Republican and Democratic parties on Monday used Microsoft apps for the first time to report caucus results.

Both parties said they believed the apps would be quicker and more accurate, but that didn’t mean the technology was fool-proof.

At around 7:50 p.m., the GOP reporting site went down for about 15 minutes, but that was simply a matter of “enthusiasm blowing the doors down” and was resolved by “Microsoft dialing up servers,” said Charlie Szold, a spokesman for the Iowa GOP.

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The site went down briefly a few more times throughout the evening.

Both parties had back-ups to the apps. The app malfunctioned in some locations, but that was expected and didn’t create huge hiccups, Szold said.

“Everything appears to be running smoothly,” Szold said. “So far it’s just what we’re expecting. Most people are using the app but if they have problems, we’re going with the backup system.”

Democrats for the first time additionally launched what they refer to as “satellite” and “tele-caucus” sites.

The idea was to create new ways for participation, particularly for those who are disabled or in jobs, such as the military, that prohibit them from attending in person, noted Sam Lau, a spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party.

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Four sites participated in the satellite caucusing: The Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown, a senior-living facility in Iowa City, and the behavioral health institutes in Woodward and Glenwood. About 90 people dialed into the tele-caucus conference call.

“We had heard some criticism through the years that due to the nature of the caucuses, some people weren’t able to caucus,” Lau said. “We heard those criticism and we said ‘We’re going to try to do something about it.’”

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