‘Technical issues’ delay Iowa caucuses results in opening US primary
The winner of yesterday’s Iowa caucuses, the traditional curtain raiser in the race to appoint a Democratic candidate for the US presidential election, is yet to be announced after “technical issues” held up the results.
Iowa democratic party chairman Troy Price told the media to expect the results sometime today after the party reported “inconsistencies” in the reporting of data from polling sites.
Yesterday voters cast their ballots at more than 1,600 schools, churches and libraries around state to decide which of the eleven Democratic nominees would take an early victory in the five month contest to see who will face President Donald Trump in November.
Several candidates, including Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and former mayor of Indiana’s South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, have claimed victory.
Sanders’ campaign released internal numbers from 40 per cent of caucus sites which showed the left-wing candidate out in first place, trailed by Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden.
He told supporters: “I have a strong feeling that at some point the results will be announced, and when those results are announced I have a good feeling we’re going to be doing very very well here in Iowa”.
This year was the first in which Iowa Democrats are required to report three counts to the party’s central headquarters.
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Mandy McClure, the party’s spokesman for the state, sought to reassure voters that the party was simply faced with a “reporting issue”:
“The app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion”, she added.
However, party officials at a county level disagreed, saying that the app created for poll organisers to report votes had broken.
The campaign manager for Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said that “every second that passes undermines the process a little bit”.
Republicans greeted the delay with glee, with Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, describing events as “a Democratic party meltdown” on Twitter.
He added: “They can’t even run the caucus and they want to run the government. No thank you.”
In 2012 the GOP also came unstuck in Iowa, where eventual nominee Mitt Romney was initially declared the winner, only have the result turned over in favour of Rick Santorum two weeks later.
Several of the Democratic candidates, including Biden and Warren, have already left for New Hampshire, where the first primary will be held on 11 February.