Rove: I think this is the last Iowa caucus we see
No winner declared in Iowa due to irregularities; Fox News contributor Karl Rove weighs in.
Former Bush adviser Karl Rove said the ongoing troubles with the Iowa Democratic presidential caucus process may be its death knell before the next iteration rolls around in 2024.
Rove made the remarks on "Hannity" moments before 100 percent of the precincts were being recorded as reported with Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. in a tight race at the top of the count.
"I think this is the last Iowa caucus we see," Rove said. "I understand why Chairman [Tom] Perez came out and said he wanted to recanvass [Iowa] because there are roughly 1700 precincts."
Rove said other news outlets had reported that dozens of Iowa voting precincts' counts had mistakes or irregularities in them.
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"You have to be in the room at 7:00 [PM]. If your candidate doesn't meet the viability threshold, you can either go home or go vote for somebody else who is already in there. But that means there should be no precinct in the state in which there are more votes cast in the final alignment than were cast in the first one," Rove explained.
Pivoting to his trademark whiteboard, Rove projected what the final delegate count would be. Fox News has, at press time, not called the Iowa race for any candidate.
Rove predicted that no matter which of the top two candidates squeeze out a win, both are likely to get 12 delegates, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., would get nine and former Vice President Joe Biden would receive eight.
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The Iowa state party's numbers showed that Buttigieg would be awarded 564.012 SDEs, or state delegate equivalents, while Sanders would receive 562.497 SDEs. Sanders held a sizeable popular vote lead, though, and finished ahead of Buttigieg by a 43,671 to 37,557 vote margin. He fell behind in delegates due to Iowa's unusual voting system that gave different delegate weights to different precincts.
After the "second alignment" -- meaning the popular vote after the elimination of candidates who received less than 15 percent of the vote in the first round of caucusing -- Sanders was still ahead of Buttigieg, 45,826 votes to 43,195.
Nevertheless, as the results posted, Buttigieg was speaking on-stage at a CNN town hall, and anchor Chris Cuomo suggested the former South Bend, Ind., mayor had won the caucuses.
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.