Jason Noble

jnoble2@dmreg.com

County delegates were awarded in several Iowa Democratic caucus precincts this week on the basis of a coin flip.

That one little wrinkle in the intricate and complex tapestry of the Iowa Democratic Party’s presidential preference process has caused great confusion among caucus observers and left supporters of second-place finisher Bernie Sanders feeling a bit shortchanged.

The actual number of caucus precincts in which a coin flip helped decide the allocation of delegates is unknown and may remain unknown. And that means the impact those coin flips had on the final result of the razor-thin race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton is likely to remain unknown as well.

The Iowa Democratic Party told The Des Moines Register on Tuesday that seven coin flips were reported through the mobile app many caucus sites used to report results. It does not identify the precincts in which they occurred. Several more coin flips were identified by the Register through interviews, tips and social media.

It appears safe to say at this point that coin flips occurred in at least a dozen precincts, and that Clinton and Sanders won roughly an equal number of them.

Iowa caucus coin flip count unknown

Through all that murk, though, we can at least shine some light on the process itself. Here’s a rundown on the hows, whys and whats of Iowa caucus coin flips.

Under what circumstances are county delegates awarded at a caucus with a coin flip?

Coin flips are used as tiebreakers in various scenarios that can arise in a Democratic caucus. The Iowa Democratic Party’s handbook for precinct chairpersons identifies three situations in which a coin flip is required:

When there are more delegates to elect to the county convention than there are delegates awarded to candidates through the caucuses’ allocation formula.

For example : Imagine a precinct with seven delegates and two viable candidates. If Candidate A had one more supporter in the room than her opponent, she would be awarded four delegates while the three others would go to Candidate B. But if the two candidates had an equal number of supporters — that is, if they tied — a coin flip would be required to determine who received the fourth delegate.

This is probably the scenario that forced most of the coin flips involving Clinton and Sanders on Monday night.

: Imagine a precinct with seven delegates and two viable candidates. If Candidate A had one more supporter in the room than her opponent, she would be awarded four delegates while the three others would go to Candidate B. But if the two candidates had an equal number of supporters — that is, if they tied — a coin flip would be required to determine who received the fourth delegate. This is probably the scenario that forced most of the coin flips involving Clinton and Sanders on Monday night. When the delegate-allocation formula awards more delegates than there are delegates assigned to the precinct. In this case, a coin flip may be needed to determine which candidate loses one.

For example : Imagine an eight-delegate precinct with five candidates. It’s possible, because of numerical rounding, that the equation caucus chairs use to determine delegates would end up awarding nine among the five candidates. Typically, the candidate with the smallest fraction of a delegate would lose this phantom delegate, but if fractions won by two candidates were the same, a coin toss would decide who loses the delegate.

: Imagine an eight-delegate precinct with five candidates. It’s possible, because of numerical rounding, that the equation caucus chairs use to determine delegates would end up awarding nine among the five candidates. Typically, the candidate with the smallest fraction of a delegate would lose this phantom delegate, but if fractions won by two candidates were the same, a coin toss would decide who loses the delegate. When there are more viable groups than there are county delegates available in a given precinct.

For example: Imagine there’s a precinct with three county delegates. If four presidential candidates were declared viable in this precinct, one of those candidates would have to be disqualified, since there are not enough delegates to allocate to all four. Typically, the candidate with the least support would be dropped. But if the bottom two candidates were tied with the same number of supporters, a coin flip would decide which received the delegate and which was forced to realign.

Sometimes, Iowa Democrats award caucus delegates with a coin flip

Remind me — what’s the difference between county delegates and state delegate equivalents?

This is important. The delegates elected at Democratic precinct caucus sites are delegates to county-level party meetings that will be held in the spring. There are roughly 11,000 of these delegates chosen across the state on caucus night.

But the presidential preferences of these county delegates are not the results used to determine the winning candidate on caucus night. Instead, county-delegate figures from every precinct are reported to the state party, which feeds those results through a formula that determines the support each candidate has in terms of state-delegate equivalents.

That’s the number of delegates each candidate would take into the Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention early this summer. There are about 1,400 of these delegates.

So what does that have to do with the coin flips?

It helps put the coin flips in perspective. Each flip decides a single county-level delegate at a single precinct — 1 delegate in the 11,000 who ultimately will be expressed in terms of 1,400 state delegates.

It means that the county delegates chosen by coin flips in various caucus precincts across the state represent just a fraction of the delegates used to determine the statewide winner.

Iowa's nightmare revisited: Was correct winner called?

OK, but could the county delegates won on coin flips have decided the race?

The best information we have on the coin flips that occurred Monday night suggests they were pretty evenly split in favor of Clinton and Sanders: Of the seven identified by the party, Sanders won six. Of the seven identified by the Register, Clinton won six.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean the delegates each candidate won on a coin toss were equal and canceled each other out.

There’s a huge variation across precincts in how many state delegate equivalents a county delegate is worth. At one extreme are precincts in Osceola County, where 0.0167 state delegate equivalents were awarded for each county delegate. At the other is Linn County, where 0.3517 state delegate equivalents were awarded for each county delegate — 21 times the Osceola figure. The average number of state delegate equivalents awarded per county delegate is 0.1416.

The variation hinges in large part on the strength of the Democratic vote from a county in previous statewide elections.

So here are a couple of thought experiments: All else being equal, how many theoretical coin flips would Sanders have had to win in Linn County precincts to make him the statewide winner? The answer: Sanders would have had to win six delegates away from Clinton.

And how many coin flips would he need at “average” precincts to overtake Hillary? He'd need to win away 14.

Here’s a real life example of how a coin flip could have affected the outcome, taken from one of the situations we know the most about:

At the Ames 2-4 precinct in Story County, organizers awarded Clinton one of the site’s eight county delegates on the basis of a coin flip, giving her five against three for Sanders.

Data released by the Iowa Democratic Party show that the precinct provided 1.84 state delegate equivalents to the overall statewide result. Each of its county delegates, then, was worth 0.23 state delegate equivalents.

According to the actual final Democratic caucus results, Hillary Clinton won 700.59 state delegate equivalents, while Sanders won 696.82.

If the Ames 2-4 coin flip had gone the other way, Sanders would have picked up 0.23 more delegates, and Clinton would’ve lost the same number, making the final result 700.36 delegates for Clinton and 697.05 for Sanders.