Obscure party rule can be called upon to decide a tied result – and its use shows how close the Democratic race is

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

In a sign of how close the race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has been in Iowa, officials in some counties resorted to a coin toss.

According to an obscure Democratic party rule, a coin flip can be called upon if the result is a tie. The toss was used in a handful of precincts to decide how to award the number of delegates to the county convention.

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This video posted on social media shows caucus functionaries tossing a coin to break a tie between Sanders and Clinton in West Davenport; it also reveals the “letting the coin land on the ground” technique was used.

Andrew Tadlock (@andytadlock) Unbelievable coin toss decides a dead heat in west Davenport! @HillaryClinton wins! @chucktodd @CNBC @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/CtsvYJllBf

In total, the Clinton camp won six out of six coin tosses.

Sam Lau, the Iowa Democratic party spokesman, noted that the coin tosses were used to determine county convention delegates, which make up only a fraction of the state delegates awarded to candidates. The coin tosses did not affect the overall result in the state.



David Schweingruber, an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University, explained to the Des Moines Register how a total of 484 eligible caucus attendees were initially recorded at Ames.



Yet when each candidate’s preference group was counted, Clinton had 240 supporters, Sanders had 179, and Martin O’Malley had five and was declared out.

Those figures added up to just 424 participants, leaving 60 apparently missing. The numbers were plugged into a formula that determines delegate allocations, with Clinton receiving four delegates and Sanders three – leaving one delegate unassigned.

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A Democratic party hotline was called to advise on how to decide between Clinton and Sanders, and party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss. A Clinton supporter called “heads” on the quarter flipped in the air, winning her a fifth delegate.

According to some accounts, the historical origin of coin flipping is the interpretation of a chance outcome as the expression of divine will. The Romans knew this game of chance as navia aut caput, translated as “ship or head”, as some coins had a ship on one side and the head of the emperor on the other.



Cross and pile was a coin-flipping variant in medieval England: with the cross being the major design on one side of the coin, and the pile the mark created by the hammer used to strike the metal on the other side.

Now we refer to the two possible outcomes simply as heads and tails, as these represent opposite body parts.

Other significant coin tosses through the ages include the Wright brothers flipping a coin in 1903 to see which one of them would make the first ever powered flight. Wilbur won the toss, although his attempt was only partially successful and as a result Orville’s later flight was considered the first example of its kind.



Portland, in Oregon, was given its name in a process that involved a coin toss. Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove each wanted to name the new town after their respective hometowns of Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine. Pettygrove won the toss, and so the town was named Portland.

A copper 1¢ piece minted in 1835 and now dubbed the Portland Penny, is on display at the Oregon Historical Society museum.

The humble coin toss, however, is not only used to decide candidates in the US – in May 2007, Conservative candidate Christopher Underwood-Frost only held on to his English council seat by winning the toss of a coin after tying with his Liberal Democrat rival in Lincolnshire. He said after winning: “Here I am reselected by a way that I don’t think anybody would agree with, but that’s the law.”