Votes from America’s first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus have started coming in the day after technical problems held up results.
With 62 per cent of votes counted, former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg was narrowly leading ahead of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar.
Although Iowa is a small and largely agricultural state that is not necessarily representative of the United States as a whole, its status as the first to vote on presidential candidates gives it a political significance beyond its size.
However, the chaos overnight has led to questions over whether it will keep that status.
On Monday night the state’s Democratic party spotted “inconsistencies” in the results, forcing them to grapple with apparent technical issues involving an app brought in to help streamline the process. Party leaders said a “coding issue” led to errors preventing some precincts from reporting their votes.
Following the tech glitches, Nevada’s Democrat party leaders said they won’t plan to use the app for its caucus on 22 February.
Iowa’s Republican governor Kim Reynolds defended the state’s first-in-the-nation status, pointing to the caucus system’s ability to encourage “dialogue between candidates and voters that makes our presidential candidates accountable for the positions they take and the records they hold”.
She said: “The process is not suffering because of a short delay in knowing the final results. Iowans and all Americans should know we have complete confidence that every last vote will be counted and every last voice will be heard.”
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In terms of the popular vote – with 62 per cent of the results in – Bernie Sanders was leading with 26 percent.
Pete Buttigieg was close behind with 25 percent; Elizabeth Warren was on 20 per cent and Joe Biden was on 13 per cent.
CNN reports that Pete Buttigieg is leading on state delegate equivalents with 62 per cent of the votes in.
The current tally – with 38 per cent still to come – has the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, in first place, followed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar.
Price: “What happened last night was unacceptable.” He says there will be an independent investigation into what has been a humiliating episode for the Democratic Party,
Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, is holding a press conference at which he says 62 per cent of the results will be released. He says that for him, the chaos of the caucus is “personal” – but stresses that the underlying data is “secure”. “I can assure Iowans of that.”
What results are we getting from Iowa?
First, we’ll see how voters initially caucused. Then we’ll see the final or second alignment that shows who voters picked after their first choice didn’t meet the 15 per cent viability threshold.
Then we’ll see the state delegate equivalents, the number of delegates each candidate received as a result of those votes.
Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and other Democrats announced they will not be attending the president’s State of the Union address.
Here’s more on the exchange between a precinct captain and an Iowa voter learning that Pete Buttigieg is gay:
The Independent‘s Chris Riotta reports that billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a later-in-the-race entry who didn’t make the cut for Iowa, signaled to his campaign to double its advertising after the caucus fallout.
A woman who initially supported Pete Buttigieg asked to take her voting card back after she found out he has a same-sex partner, right after voting for him: “It all just went right down the toilet, is where it all just went.”
Iowa gov: ‘The process is not suffering because of a short delay in knowing the final results’
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds is defending the state’s first-in-the-nation primary status following an app glitch that has delayed the release of caucus votes until later this afternoon.
The Republican governor said the state’s “unique role encourages a grassroots nominating process that empowers everyday Americans, not Washington insiders or powerful billionaires.”
“The face-to-face retail politics nature of Iowa’s caucus system also encourages dialogue between candidates and voters that makes our presidential candidates accountable for the positions they take and the records they hold”, she said in a joint statement. “Iowa’s bipartisan first-in-the-nation status helped lead to the nomination of President Obama and has the full backing of President Trump. The process is not suffering because of a short delay in knowing the final results. Iowans and all Americans should know we have complete confidence that every last vote will be counted and every last voice will be heard.”
Meanwhile, in the lost and found:
Less than three hours from the scheduled release of the first votes cast in 2020’s Democratic primary, AOC says to take a breath.
Nevada’s caucus won’t use the app that the DNC commissioned to record and report votes after the chaos and fallout from Iowa.
The Independent‘s Andrew Buncombe says “Iowa’s time has come and gone.”
“What may have once been a workable but quirky marker in the political calendar has turned into an overblown, bloated horror that plays a vastly over-inflated role on shaping the presidential campaigns.”
As the world awaits the first trickling of results from the 2020 Iowa caucus after an apparent chaotic glitch, the campaigns are watching:
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has rallied with and backed Bernie Sanders, who is expected to have had a significant night in Iowa, is telling supporters to take a moment to breathe.
Meanwhile, Andrew Yang, whose campaign has been sidelined in debates while being dominated in the polls, said the caucus underscored that the race “is a muddled mess” with no clear front-runner as the campaigns head into New Hampshire.
Claims made by US conservatives that the Iowa Democratic caucus was subject to electoral fraud are false, proved untrue by public data and the state’s top election official.
That didn’t stop them from going viral, as right-wing activists took to Twitter over the weekend to spread specious allegations of malfeasance on the eve of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus.
Caucus results to be released at 5pm EST
The Iowa Democratic Party has announced results of last night’s caucus will begin arriving at 5pm EST, though it’s unclear how much of those tallies will be released.
The party told reporters that a “majority” of the results will arrive this afternoon. That will include at least 50 per cent of the results. So, not a complete picture of last night’s caucus.
2020 caucus turnout on pace with 2016 numbers
Its biggest turnout was in 2008, when nearly 240,000 people participated.
The total turnout is still too early to call, as the party wrangles together the votes amid a reportedly turbulent technical mess following a “coding issue” with the app that recorded and reported the results from each precinct. Party leaders expect to release those numbers today, at the earliest.
‘The Iowa caucus fiasco is a metaphor for the state of US democracy’
For Indy Premium, Matthew Norman says that this embarrassment is in danger of ingraining the notion of Democrats – their candidates, by unfair association, as well as their electoral organisers – as hapless amateurs who couldn’t oversee a church tombola without recourse to legal action.
‘Every single second that passes where we don’t get a final result, it’s concerning’
This tweet from Elizabeth Warren’s campaign manager in the wee hours is not getting any younger.