Is it normal for participants to leave a caucus before its time to tally up the (Ames: get credit)

[Mighty_Pelican]

60 eligible participants initially recorded at the beginning went missing in Ames, Iowa before it was time to tally up each person's candidate preference. I'm not from Iowa and I'm curious to know if this is the norm or if the Democratic Party has some explaining to do. What would prompt 60 people to leave early?

A total of 484 eligible caucus attendees were initially recorded at the site. But when each candidate’s preference group was counted, Clinton had 240 supporters, Sanders had 179 and Martin O’Malley had five (causing him to be declared non-viable).

Those figures add up to just 424 participants, leaving 60 apparently missing. When those numbers were plugged into the formula that determines delegate allocations, Clinton received four delegates and Sanders received three — leaving one delegate unassigned.

Unable to account for that numerical discrepancy and the orphan delegate it produced, the Sanders campaign challenged the results and precinct leaders called a Democratic Party hot line set up to advise on such situations.

Sometimes, Iowa Democrats award caucus delegates with a coin flip

[duster1979]

First-time caucus goers often don't realize the time commitment required, so I could see people signing in and then taking off when they realized that they were going to be there awhile. I don't know that it's the "norm", but it certainly happens. And given that Ames is the home of Iowa State University I could see it happening to that extent as there would likely be a lot of first-timers there.

It's also possible that they could have gone to get credit for a class and bailed out at the first opportunity.