Iowa’s vote launching this year’s US presidential contest on Monday degenerated into a fiasco marred by major delays, with US Senator Bernie Sanders claiming a slim lead among the Democratic hopefuls based on partial unofficial results.
Figures released by Sanders’ campaign, five hours after the caucuses opened across the state of Iowa, showed former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg in second, a strong showing for a candidate who was a national unknown just one year ago.
“Iowa, you have shocked the nation,” the 38-year-old gay military reservist told cheering supporters in what sounded very much like a victory speech. “Because tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
With chaos on the ground as Democratic Party officials reportedly told campaigns not to expect results before sometime yesterday, Sanders, running as a democratic socialist, took to the microphones to proclaim he had “a good feeling we’re going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.”
“Tonight in this enormously consequential 2020 election, the first state in the country has voted, and today marks the beginning of the end for [US President] Donald Trump,” the 78-year-old said.
Iowa is a closely watched test in the months-long process to determine who is to face the Republican president in the November presidential election.
Sanders later took the bold step of releasing internal, unpublished results from nearly 40 percent of the precincts, which showed him with 28.62 percent of the state delegate equivalent, the all-important figure used to determine who wins the Iowa caucuses.
Buttigieg earned 25.71 percent, followed by progressive US Senator Elizabeth Warren with 18.42 percent, the data indicated.
Former US vice president Joe Biden, the national frontrunner, was in fourth with 15.08 percent, a disappointing showing for the candidate who has consistently claimed that he is the person best positioned to defeat Trump.
The Warren campaign pushed back at Sanders’ move, with her chief strategist, Joe Rospars, tweeting: “Any campaign saying they won or putting out incomplete numbers is contributing to the chaos and misinformation.”
However, as the waiting dragged on with zero results reported, other candidates made claims to have beaten expectations.
“I’m feeling good,” Biden said before Sanders released the internals. “So it’s on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, well beyond. We’re in this for the long haul.”
New Hampshire votes second, on Tuesday next week, and tradition dictates that the top performers in Iowa board jets and race to “The Granite State” to capitalize on the momentum.
The Iowa embarrassment is particularly bad timing, as US officials are under pressure to demonstrate the integrity of the voting system following 2016, when Russia stood accused of interfering in the presidential election in an effort to help Trump defeat Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Iowa Democratic Party communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement read on US networks that further checks were ordered after “inconsistencies” were found in the reporting of three sets of results.
“This is simply a reporting issue,” she said, denying that there was “a hack or an intrusion.”
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