The Iowa Democratic caucus was a mess. The results took days to release and, as the New York Times reports, they were “riddled with errors and inconsistencies.” Volunteers administering some caucus sites may have failed to enforce recently changed rules and awarded the incorrect number of state delegate equivalents (SDEs) to each candidate. The tangle of human and technological failures surrounding the process has been attributed to everything from incompetence to conspiracy to unconscious bias.

The most important facts, however, are not in dispute. Iowa Democrats arrived at their caucus sites and declared their initial preferences — i.e. which candidate they were there to support — and these were recorded as the “first alignment” numbers. Caucus-goers whose candidate didn’t meet the 15 percent threshold at their site were given the opportunity to switch to a different candidate for a “final alignment.” The final alignment numbers were then used to assign each candidate both SDEs (for Iowa’s state-level Democratic convention) and delegates to the national convention.

The first alignment numbers indicate that 42,672 Iowans showed up at their caucus sites to back Bernie Sanders — about six thousand votes more than his next-closest competitor in the eight-candidate field, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg. In the final alignment, this massive popular vote margin dropped to a still-healthy 2,500. Other candidates — one of whom, let’s remember, is the former vice president of the United States — trailed far behind.