After a delay of 22 hours, Americans will have to keep waiting to finally get their first look at who may be the Democratic candidate for President.
The Iowa Democratic Party says results of Monday night’s caucuses will be released Tuesday afternoon around 5 p.m.
The goal for candidates is to attract 15 per cent of total voters at the caucuses. If that number is not met, they are removed from the ballet and their voters are free to show their support to another candidate.
Paul Quirk, a professor of U.S. politics at the University of British Columbia said the caucus is a temporary mess but not that devastating for the Democrats in the long run and upcoming campaigns.
“It’s an embarrassment, but it is not terribly important in the long run, and there will be many more primaries that will erase the memory of the Iowa caucus before anything happens,” Quirk said.
President Donald Trump called it an “unmitigated disaster” and has predicted that Iowa would vote for him again in November.
“The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is ‘Trump,’” he tweeted.
Tuesday afternoon Bernie Sanders’s decided to take matters into his own hands, as his 2020 campaign released their very own results that reflects 60 per cent of the votes for the Iowa caucus.
The report done by Sanders’s 2020 campaign is based on data sent by “precinct captains around the state.”
First round
Sanders 29.08 per cent
Buttigieg 21.63 per cent
Warren 19.51per cent
Klobuchar 12.27 per cent
Biden 12.04 per cent
After realignment
Sanders 29.4 per cent
Buttigieg 24.87 per cent
Warren 20.65 per cent
Biden 12.92 per cent
Klobuchar 11.18 per cent
Roger Lau, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign manager said they are also collecting their own data based on photos and raw documents and will release the results later today.
“Our campaign collected photos and other raw documentation of the results at hundreds of caucus locations as part of our internal reporting process,” Lau said.
The Democratic plan of taking down President Donald Trump turned into a unsuccessful mess.
Precinct captains across the state reported widespread malfunction of the mobile app. The Democratic party couldn’t deliver results on time due to the malfunction that required them to switch from the app to counting votes manually.
Despite the results, candidates gave their best efforts in their speeches that assured triumph.
Democratic Party officials said the delay was because of the new rules requiring caucus leaders to record three sets of numbers to party headquarters, instead of just the delegate totals.
The caucuses began at 7 p.m. and turned into a mess of chaos and disaster in schools, gymnasiums and union halls.
Caucus goers joined at nearly 1,600 sites across Iowa, to report and count how many people backed each candidate on the first and second alignment.
For Iowans, it’s their first time reporting three votes in their complicated voting system, aided by a new mobile app to help the process.
Users claimed that they were not able to submit information and tried to use a telephone hotline instead, which slowed the whole process down and led some to question the accuracy of the results.
“This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion,” said Mandy McClure, the Iowa party’s communications director.
After the exchanging of votes is over, the party will publish the STEs, which represents the number of delegates assigned to each candidate.
Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said her team is worried about the delay of the data and the authenticity of the process, in an interview on Tuesday.
“We feel great about our performance last night,” but declined to answer a question about where the campaign thinks Biden finished in the caucuses.
Last night’s first-in-the-nation caucus plays a crucial role in momentum when it comes to choosing a presidential candidate. Iowa and New Hampshire usually foreshadow the primary season and predict who the candidate will be.
Regardless of the few delegates in Iowa, it is a significant start as the winner often becomes the candidate, as shown in the six previous elections.
Most of the anxious group of Democratic candidates turned their focus as they prepare for the next new round of campaigning in New Hampshire before the primary which takes place on Feb. 11.