Iowa nightmare revisited: Was correct winner called on caucus night?

DES MOINES — It's Iowa's nightmare scenario revisited: An extraordinarily close count in the Iowa caucuses — and reports of chaos in precincts and computer glitches — are raising questions about accuracy of the count and winner.

This time it's the Democrats, not the Republicans.

Even as Hillary Clinton trumpeted her Iowa win in New Hampshire on Tuesday, aides for Bernie Sanders said the eyelash-thin margin raised questions and called for a review. The chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party rejected that notion, saying the results are final.

The situation echoes the events on the Republican side in the 2012 caucuses, when one winner (Mitt Romney, by eight votes) was named on caucus night, but a closer examination of the paperwork that reflected the head counts showed someone else pulled in more votes (Rick Santorum, by 34 votes). But some precincts were still missing entirely.

Like Republican party officials in 2012, Democratic party officials worked into the early morning on caucus night trying to account for results from a handful of tardy precincts.

But at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire announced that Clinton had eked out a slim victory, based on results from 1,682 of 1,683 precincts.