Story highlights Did Hillary Clinton win the Iowa caucuses thanks to coin flips?

Coin flips -- specifically "games of chance" -- are used in rare circumstances at precinct caucuses to adjudicate ties or resolve issues created by rounding errors

(CNN) Hillary Clinton claimed victory in the Iowa caucuses Tuesday after topping Democratic rival Bernie Sanders by the skin-of-her-teeth margin of 49.9% to 49.6%. There's been some confusion about how much of a role -- if any -- coin flips played in determining who won delegates.

Coin flips -- specifically "games of chance" -- are used in rare circumstances at precinct caucuses to adjudicate ties or resolve issues created by rounding errors. At stake at these precinct-level coin flips is the one remaining slot in that precinct for a campaign to send a delegate to attend that precinct's county convention. Coin flips are not used to decide which candidate wins a state convention delegate or national convention delegate.

How many coin flips were there on Monday night?

The Iowa Democratic Party does not have comprehensive records on how many coin flips/games of chance were held Monday evening. However, they do have partial records.

More than half of the 1,681 Democratic caucuses held Monday night used a new Microsoft reporting app. Of those, there were exactly seven county delegates determined by coin flip. The remaining precincts did not use the Microsoft app, and instead used traditional phone-line reporting to transmit results. In these precincts, there no are records of how many coin flips occurred. There's only anecdotal information on these precincts.

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