AMES, Iowa — Wearing a pink light-up beanie, Samantha Goodale was firmly in the corner of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders at her caucus in an elementary school gym here on Monday night, until she left to use the bathroom.
When Goodale, 35, came back, she asked a guy named Jim to borrow a pen. As she used it, Jim pitched her on Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. And she stayed in Warren’s corner, just because it felt right.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I still think the same things I did.”
Like any good caucus — the personal and unpredictable fashion of voting that Iowans use to make their first-in-the nation presidential choices — there were last-minute switches here in this college town north of Des Moines.
There were also surprising realignments, as when half the supporters of former vice president Joe Biden joined the corner of former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, sparking cheers from the Buttigieg crowd and leaving Biden below the 15 percent threshold needed to earn state delegates in the first round.
And there was last-minute persuasion as Iowans here and at nearly 1,700 sites across the state gathered in school gymnasiums, community centers, and VFW halls. After months of political commercials on their televisions and canvassers on their doorsteps, they were ready to finally give the country its first official message about which candidate Democrats might ultimately choose to take on President Trump.
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