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Sen. Bernie Sanders declared victory in Iowa. File photo Holly Pelczynski/Bennington Banner

Sen. Bernie Sanders has claimed victory in Iowa, three days after the caucuses concluded and with results still trickling in.



“What I want to do today, three days late, is I want to thank the people of Iowa for the very strong victory they gave us at the Iowa caucuses on Monday night,” Sanders said during a press conference Thursday in Manchester, New Hampshire.



Sanders announcement comes as 97% of the precincts have reported vote tallies. The Vermont senator is currently in the lead with 26.53% of the popular vote. Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who had claimed victory in Iowa late Monday night with only 2% of the vote reported, is second with 25.04% of the vote.



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However, Buttigieg leads by a razor thin margin in another category of the complicated Iowa caucus process in which “state delegate equivalents” are awarded after supporters of “non viable” candidates choose someone else to support.



Buttigieg is leading in state delegate equivalents with 26.2%, but Sanders at 26.1% is only a tenth of one percent behind the former South Bend mayor.



On Thursday, Sanders told reporters that state delegate equivalents do not matter as much as the popular vote and that he feels comfortable claiming to win the caucuses even while 3% of precincts remain to be tallied.



“Even though the vote tabulations have been extremely slow, we are now at a point, with some 97% of the precincts reporting, where our campaign is winning the popular initial vote by some 6,000 votes,” Sanders said.

“In other words some 6,000 more Iowans came out on caucus night to support our candidacy than the candidacy of anyone else 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,” he said.

Results from the first-in-the-nation caucuses have been slow to be reported after technical issues with a vote tabulation mobile app forced the Iowa Democratic Party to manually calculate and verify the results.

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On Tuesday night, the Iowa Democratic Party released roughly two-thirds of Iowa precincts. At that time Sanders had 25.1% of the vote, trailing behind former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who had 26.9%.

Buttigieg declared himself the winner based on the early results, but the Sanders campaign was quick to respond to the claim, releasing internal numbers showing the Vermont senator in the lead. On Tuesday, before Sanders left Iowa for New Hampshire, Sanders called Buttigieg’s victory speech premature.



“I don’t know how anybody declares victory before you have an official statement of election results, so we’re not declaring victory,” Sanders said Tuesday afternoon.



Sanders still leads in the polls in New Hampshire, where the primary is Tuesday. Buttigieg, however, has seen a bump in New Hampshire surveys since his strong showing in Iowa.

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