Really? I guess having the Chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, Matthew Strawn, declare Romney the winner isn't good enough, huh?
He didn’t “declare him the winner” in the sense that he stated an official result on behalf of the party. It’s not clear that he was even speaking for the Iowa party. He said he was chairman of the party, but he didn’t say whether or not was speaking in an official capacity. (That might have been clear from other remarks not in the video, so it’s a minor point.)
He did congratulate Romney for winning and Santorum for coming in second, based on the numbers he had at the time. He was pretty careful to say that the certification could take up to two weeks.
In the video, he said, “each county has 2 weeks to send the certified form E ... to republican headquarters. So within 2 weeks the republican party of Iowa will have the final certified results... But I can report...” and then he gave the results that made the headlines at the time.
I saw written reports from Iowa that made the same point — official results would come later. But they weren’t particularly visible.
After 2000, I hoped people would learn not to take unofficial election night results too seriously. Particularly in a close election.