DAVENPORT, Iowa — The results of the Iowa caucus were delayed late Monday amid technical problems that caused widespread confusion among White House hopefuls and the tens of thousands of Democrats who gathered at libraries and gyms across the state to pick who should challenge President Donald Trump.
While party officials said the results were delayed by “quality control” of data, reports flew around the state of technical failures and problems with newly-designed apps and phone backups that were supposed to make it easier to report results.
The disarray threatened Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status, and local newscasters filled the airwaves with fretting over the future of the caucus. It also led to sharp complaints from former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, which demanded “full explanations” before results were released.
Dana Remus, Biden’s general counsel, wrote in a widely distributed letter that the app used to transmit results from the caucuses “failed,” as did a backup telephone reporting system.
Trump’s campaign delighted in the chaos, issuing a statement calling the Democratic caucus the “sloppiest train wreck in history.”
Monday’s vote was to kick-start a wave of elections across the nation and, after months of fluctuating polling and breathless punditry, offer a first glimpse at whom Democrats favor in their quest to defeat Trump.
Instead, it became a cliffhanger for the top five candidates, who each took turns on national TV promising to continue in New Hampshire next week regardless of the results.
Adding to the confusion, one candidate declared himself the winner before any results were released. Shortly before midnight, Mayor Pete Buttigieg told a cheering crowd that “by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.”
Even when the results arrive, they will offer an imprecise snapshot of the Democratic electorate’s leanings.
The rural state’s overwhelmingly white demographics bear little resemblance to the nation’s electorate, though the Democrats who won the past few caucuses have later captured the party’s nomination.
Still, it will hold clues to how Georgia Democrats will decide when they vote in their primary March 24. Despite sharp differences in the two states' populations, Democrats in Georgia and Iowa have only diverged once in three decades. That was in 1992, when Iowans favored native son Tom Harkin and Georgians picked Bill Clinton.
'A big X’
Long before the technical disaster, the Iowa contest seemed to compete for attention from voters and the candidates with the Democratic-led impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.
Three of the leading candidates — U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — started the day on Capitol Hill, where they are acting as jurors in the trial, rather than in Des Moines.
Polling ahead of the caucus offered little to go by after a late weekend decision to scrap the famed Iowa Poll because of irregularities. But many Iowa analysts suggest that Sanders has an edge over other top candidates: Biden, Warren and Buttigieg.
Invigorated by large crowds at weekend events, Sanders’ campaign aides were upbeat Monday about his chances even as some of his rivals sought to lower their expectations.
Among them was Biden, who struggled in some important precincts around the state, including a district in Davenport where he failed to reach a key voting threshold.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who has fast emerged as one of his leading supporters, pleaded with voters at an elementary school auditorium in the riverside town to back him.
“He’s been a leader with character. People say you shouldn’t talk about the past, but that’s like me walking in for a job interview, taking a big ‘X’ over eight years of my resume,” she said, from the stage. “I care about what he says he has done, and I care about what he says he would do.
Second-tier candidates, too, faced a decisive moment. Klobuchar, who trailed in fifth place in many pre-caucus polls, told MSNBC that there’s “no scenario where I don’t go on” to compete in New Hampshire’s primary Feb. 11.
Waiting in the wings is Mike Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and multibillionaire who has strategically ignored Iowa and the other early contests to place a bet on more populous states, including Georgia, that cast ballots in March.
As for Trump, he also faced a low-key test against former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who both portray him as a betrayal to conservative values. His campaign used the challenges as an opportunity to slice into some of the media spotlight.
About 80 Trump surrogates scattered across the state, including Georgia operative Ralph Reed, who heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Reed trekked to the tiny town of Mount Pleasant to stump for the president at a caucus, shortly after appearing with dozens of other Republicans before a bank of TV cameras in Des Moines.
The Associated Press declared Trump the winner of the GOP caucus early in the evening.
‘Nibbling’
Though Iowa offers only a few dozen of the hundreds of delegates needed to cement a nomination, it plays an outsized role in the process.
The voters who gather in town auditoriums and civic recreation areas across the state dictate which candidate gets a timely injection of momentum and energy — and which ones are forced to prove to nervous donors and activists that they can compete in later states.
The unpredictability is rooted in the complicated caucus system, which allows attendees to switch to another candidate on a second round of voting if their first pick doesn’t claim 15% of support. Others can simply declare themselves “uncommitted.”
That blend of chaos was on full display at Washington Elementary School in Davenport, where Biden and Klobuchar both failed to reach the 44-vote threshold needed to be viable, triggering a rush by other contenders to woo their supporters.
But this election’s outcome could be even more muddled. In addition to reporting the number of delegates each candidate wins — normally the main decider in who wins the contest — Iowa Democrats will also disclose two other metrics.
With the uncertainty of the results, multiple candidates could claim a share of the victory laurels.
That might have happened anyway, as candidates are battling to frame themselves as the leader of their ideological lane. That’s pitted Biden against Buttigieg and Klobuchar for the hearts of mainstream voters, including some who value electability above all, while Sanders and Warren face off for the liberal vote.
Sanders’ steady rise in polls has sparked concern among more moderate figures, and even some liberals, who worry that a presidential contender who describes himself as a democratic socialist will flail against Trump.
Other candidates are trying to find their own sweet spot. Buttigieg has tried to woo supporters of both Biden and Sanders, even as he acknowledges he needs a “very strong finish here” to prove he has the viability to stay in the race.
“This is our chance to show-versus-tell that we’re building the organization that can turn people out and go on to defeat Donald Trump,” he told reporters after an event in suburban Coralville.
And Warren has tried to court supporters by asserting she has a pragmatic approach to her liberal policies, including Medicare for All and a new tax on the nation's wealthiest residents, maintaining that incremental change is just "nibbling at the edges."
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