As of last night, it’s unclear who won in Iowa. But Klobuchar came out first.
In what seemed like a victory speech, Klobuchar made her case for a good night.
“You’ve probably heard we don’t know the results. But I did not want to let another minute go by without thanking all of you,” Klobuchar said as she took the stage at the Des Moines Marriott. “We know there’s delays, but we know one thing: We’re punching above our weight.”
Klobuchar made her speech before any of the other candidates addressed their crowds, and her full speech was carried by major news networks, giving the candidate free air time while the final result of the caucus remained entirely unclear.
The results of the caucus should be released sometime late Tuesday, after the event was plagued by delays. Precinct captains, Iowans designated by the Iowa Democratic Party to manage caucus sites, used a new smartphone app created specifically for the caucuses that did not work as expected. And when they tried to report problems or their results directly on phone lines, they were met with slow response times.
Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director Mandy McClure attributed the slow release of information to inconsistencies between different sets of information reported back to the party, not to the app.
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report,” McLure said.
“This is simply a reporting issue; the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”
Everyone’s a winner
Klobuchar wasn’t the only candidate claiming some sort of victory.
Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg said: “By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.”
“We don’t know all the results tonight, but tonight has already showed that Americans have a deep hunger for big, structural change,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren told a crowd at her event.
All of the campaigns had varying internal numbers, but there was at least one consistency: Vice President Joe Biden was not the frontrunner in Iowa.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign released internal numbers, showing Sanders ahead with 29 percent of the vote in 40 percent of precincts. Buttigieg’s campaign said they had won the caucuses, when it came to delegates. And Warren’s campaign manager, Roger Lau, told reporters that his campaign’s internal numbers place it as a close race between Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg.
The biggest surprise of the night was who Lau said was in fourth: Biden. Sanders’ numbers seemed to corroborate that, placing him close to tied with Klobuchar. And Klobuchar’s campaign manager, Justin Buoen, said they could even be in fourth, ahead of Biden.
“Big night in Iowa,” Buoen said on Twitter. “With the numbers we’ve seen internally and publicly, we’re running even or ahead of Vice President Biden.”
If those results hold, they would match a previously unreleased poll from the Des Moines Register and J. Ann Selzer, whose final poll has correctly predicted every single Iowa caucus winner except for Rick Santorum in 2012.
While the poll’s release was canceled on Saturday, it leaked on Monday night to 538.
Sanders in first place. Warren in second. Buttigieg in third. And Biden in fourth.