Amid a chaotic mess, Democratic candidates took to the stage to give varying versions of victory speeches before hightailing it out of Iowa for New Hampshire, as no results or winners have been announced.
An Iowa Democratic official said results are still being collected — and that will overnight if the precinct chairs keep calling them in. No time estimate was given to campaigns. “They literally have no verified results,” a senior campaign adviser said. “We won’t know anything until sometime Tuesday — at least.”
“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,” said Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director Mandy McClure in a statement. “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.”
Officials from two campaigns said they were told the app that tabulates results had crashed, contradictory to what the Iowa state party had reported.
Senator Amy Klobuchar was the first to give a pseudo-victory speech saying her campaign was “punching above” their weight. Senator Bernie Sanders said he had a good feeling and that “today marks the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.” Mayor Pete Buttigieg decided that “by all indications, we are going to on New Hampshire victorious.” Joe Biden was eager to head to greener pastures beyond Iowa, where he was expected to be more competitive, and said he was “feeling good.”
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