The closely-watched contest has been a hot mess for more than a decade.
The most-watched early presidential contest in America has been a hot mess for more than a decade.
My first Iowa caucus night was in 2012. The Republican Party of Iowa declared Mitt Romney the winner by a mere eight votes over Rick Santorum, giving Romney a boost of momentum that eventually carried him to the nomination.
By the next morning, Santorum’s underdog campaign was hearing from county chairmen about miscounts. The state party ultimately retracted its call — Santorum had actually won by 34 votes — but not for more than two weeks.
“I pulled off a miracle, but they said Romney was the winner,” Santorum said when I called him this week. “It wasn’t, ‘Santorum came from nowhere.’ It was ‘Romney won, the race is over.’ What do you think the result would have been if they said I had won?”
The 2012 debacle was the first of three consecutive botched Iowa caucus nights. On Monday, the state’s Republican caucuses will once again be run by party volunteers at 1,657 caucus sites.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
