Hang on to your hats, everyone, because Iowa is shaping up to be an unscripted chaos storm of epic proportions for the Democrats.

With the Democrat senators now set free to campaign after the vote on Friday, the next “big” piece of news from Iowa was supposed to be the last poll before the caucus, which was to be run by CNN, the Des Moines Register, and Selzer & Co. Well, the Register announced on Saturday that the poll was not going to be released.

Nothing is more important to the Register and its polling partners than the integrity of the Iowa Poll. Today, a respondent raised an issue with the way the survey was administered, which could have compromised the results of the poll. It appears a candidate’s name was omitted in at least one interview in which the respondent was asked to name their preferred candidate.”

While this appears to be isolated to one surveyor, that could not be confirmed with certainty. Therefore, out of an abundance of caution, the partners made the difficult decision not to move forward with releasing the poll. The poll was the last one scheduled by the polling partners before the first-in-the-nation Iowa presidential caucuses, which are Monday.”

J. Ann Selzer, whose company conducts the Iowa Poll, said, “There were concerns about what could be an isolated incident. Because of the stellar reputation of the poll, and the wish to always be thought of that way, the heart-wrenching decision was made not to release the poll. The decision was made with the highest integrity in mind.”

This poll has been ongoing for 76 years, according to the paper, and now it has been completely ditched at the last second (reportedly, the name left off the candidate list in the one interview was Pete Buttigieg). Of course, the last minute scrapping of the poll got the conspiracy theorists in a tizzy, because the trend was moving toward Bernie Sanders.

Now, we also know that the DNC is, shall we say, less than sanguine about Bernie potentially winning Iowa, moving on to New Hampshire and winning there, and the polling out of Nevada has been shockingly spotty, so while the current available numbers have Biden in the lead, those polls feel extremely squishy in the face of the current trends. In fact, the DNC is panicked enough that none other than has-been John Kerry was overheard talking about getting into the race.

"maybe I'm f—ing deluding myself here" and explaining that in order to run, he'd have to step down from the board of Bank of America…jfc https://t.co/TUaYzft6xE

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) February 2, 2020

Kerry quickly put out the message that the reporter couldn’t possibly believe their lying ears (he actually used an f-bomb in his initial tweet, which he then deleted), but the damage was done.

Elizabeth Warren, the media’s favored candidate, is trying to present herself as a “uniter” for the Democrat party. Given how she is currently polling, her extreme pandering, and how her fellow senator, Lisa Murkowski, slapped her down after her stunt question at the impeachment trial, I’m not sure that the party is feeling a lot of love for Warren right now.

Joe Biden, in the meantime, thinks all is well for him.

That certainly is what the DNC is hoping for. However, Iowa is not a winner-take-all state, and that could create a whole lot of confusion. It also means that almost any of the top four candidates could walk away with delegates.

This year will be extraconfusing, because the state party will release three different results:”

1. the statewide preference after the first alignment;
2. the preference after the second alignment;
3. and the final “State Delegate Equivalents,” or SDEs.”

SDEs are the estimated number of delegates each candidate would get to the congressional district and state conventions.”

Various campaigns will use the potentially differing results to their advantage, but delegates are the name of the game in Iowa. That’s why the campaigns have built up operations with hundreds of staffers and volunteers in the state, to show their grassroots support and campaign strength of organization.”

So while the first two results will be useful to inform analyses, the “winner” will be who gets the most SDEs.”

Below is first alignment. @DataProgress is also projecting final alignment…

Sanders 28%
Warren 25%
Biden 24%
Buttigieg 22%

…and State Delegate Equivalents

Bernie 604
Biden 540
Warren 510
Buttigieg 447

Note how Biden and Warren flip places https://t.co/XzrErg9w49

— Bill Scher (@billscher) February 3, 2020

The state only has 41 delegates that will be chosen at the state convention later, but over 11,000 delegates to the state convention will be chosen tomorrow (hence, the large numbers of delegates mentioned in the above tweet). And it means that though Iowa will declare a “winner,” that person can’t actually put any delegates in their count until the actual state convention in July. Yes, that doesn’t seem super complicated at all!

What the “winner” will get out of Iowa is not delegates (at least not right now), but momentum. But remember, Bernie narrowly lost Iowa in 2016 to Hillary, and his current ground game there is huge (and loves them some gulags). The only person at the moment who has any hope of stopping Bernie is Biden. But if Bernie takes Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevada becomes a new battleground in about three weeks. The South Carolina primary takes place on February 29th, and Biden is counting on it as a “firewall” – and that might not hold up for him. Believe it or not, by the end of this month, we could know whether or not Super Tuesday even matters. If Bernie sweeps the first four states, it will make the aged communist with heart issues the nearly unstoppable Democrat party nominee. And if the DNC finds a way to use superdelegates to stop Bernie from being the nominee… well, then the Democrat party base will tear itself apart on the convention floor.

Iowa is the first indicator of where the Democrat base is headed. Fasten your seatbelts – it’s going to be a bumpy night.

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license