About

I Watched 62% Of… is a Twitter snowclone parodying those who began analyzing the news that Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were in a virtual tie for first place in the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus with 62% of precincts in the state counted. The snowclone features people joking about pop culture stories in which stopping 62% of the way through would result in giving a false impression of the ending.

Origin

The results of the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus were delayed in an unprecedented way following a failure of the app used to tally votes, leading officials to have to manually tally the votes. The morning after the caucus, February 4th, 2020, Democratic officials were able to confirm 62% of the vote, showing Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie, with Sanders having a slight edge in the popular vote and Buttigieg having a slight edge in the delegate percentage count, though the numbers would give both Sanders and Buttigieg ten delegates from Iowa moving forward.^[1] This led some to declare that Buttigieg won the state, despite only 2/3s of the votes being known.^[2]

Spread

In response to the news, Twitter users began joking about pieces of pop culture in which it would be a mistake to jump to conclusions knowing only 62% of the story. For example, @chbooksdc^[3] made a joke about The Great Gatsby, tweeting, "Just finished 62% of this novel and we’re so excited for Gatsby and Daisy," gaining over 7,200 retweets and 59,000 likes (shown below, left). User @gregprice11^[4] posted an example using Game of Thrones, gaining over 310 retweets and 3,000 likes (shown below, right). The jokes were covered in a Twitter Events page.^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References