Sanders’ Iowa state director, Misty Rebik, sent a memo to staffers and supporters on Wednesday night that said the campaign has "a viable path forward to achieve a clean sweep and retake the lead in state delegate equivalents and national pledged delegates.”

Sanders’ aides believe that he has won the satellite caucuses, which were held for residents who could not attend the 7 p.m. caucuses, according to their unverified internal results. Not all of the satellite caucuses have reported their figures so far.

Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ senior adviser, said Tuesday that he finished strongly in the satellite caucuses “due to our organizing among blue-collar workers, Latinos and Muslim Americans.”

Reports circulated on Monday that showed Sanders performing well in some individual satellite caucus sites with diverse caucus-goers. A preliminary analysis of the overall results by Iowa Starting Line also found that Joe Biden "does not appear to have won any of the mostly African-American precincts that are reporting right now. Sanders carried most of those."

Sanders' team has sought to use those results to make the case that he is the strongest Democratic candidate to take on President Trump.

"We're winning by turning out a multi-racial, working-class coalition, sending a message to the rest of the country that this is how to defeat Donald Trump,” Rebik said in the memo.

Rebik acknowledged in the message that, while the campaign achieved many of its goals in the first-in-the-nation caucus, “what we didn’t get was our victory party in Iowa.” She told her team that "while that is deeply frustrating and heart-breaking, we cannot forget why we are here."

Some Sanders aides expressed frustration over the slow results trickling in from Iowa on social media on Wednesday. At one point, the Iowa Democratic Party posted inaccurate results, which appeared to misallocate some Sanders caucus-goers, and said on Twitter that there "will be a minor correction to the last batch of results and we will be pushing an update momentarily.”

Bill Neidhardt, the Iowa deputy state director, responded, “Day 3 of this mess.”

Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders’ national press secretary, said jokingly of the state party, “You’re doing great sweetie.”

In addition to denying Sanders a potential victory speech Monday, the delayed results also meant that Sanders did not raise money off of the completed results that night. Sanders’ team did not reveal its fundraising numbers over the last few days.

Sanders’ campaign said Thursday that his average donation in January was $18.72, and more than 99.9 percent of his donors had not given the maximum allowable amount and could therefore donate again.