Iowa caucuses 2020 live updates: Iowa Democratic Party delays release of results, citing ?inconsistencies?

Many of the candidates have already gone to New Hampshire, which holds its primaries in a week.When results come in, we’ll have them here.The candidates who were actively competing in Iowa included Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); former vice president Joe Biden; former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass); Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.); entrepreneur Andrew Yang; and investor Tom Steyer.●With eyes of the world on Iowa, another hiccup in American democracy.●An epic breakdown in Iowa casts a spotlight on the caucus system.●Undecided New Hampshire prepares for key first primary role after Iowa caucuses.Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said during a television interview Tuesday thhat her team has “real concerns about the integrity of the process” and stressed that “no official data” has been released on the caucuses results.Her comments came shortly after the Buttigieg campaign sent a memo to reporters detailing its precinct-level data from Monday night in Iowa.“There’s no official data that has been presented yet,” Bedingfield said during an appearance on CNN, cautioning that partial data doesn’t “paint a full picture.”She said that “we feel great about our performance last night,” but declined to answer a question about where the campaign thinks Biden finished in the caucuses.The Biden campaign on Tuesday unveiled seven endorsements from officials in early voting, Super Tuesday and battleground states, claiming they were “a sign of strength” following the Iowa caucuses.The Democratic officials include California Secretary of State Alex Padilla; Roanoke, Va., Mayor Sherman Lea; Talladega, Ala., Mayor Timothy Ragland; former senator Mark Pryor (Ark.); former senator David Pryor (Ark.); former South Carolina governor Jim Hodges; former South Carolina first lady Rachel Hodges.CONCORD, N.H. By all indications, we are going to New Hampshire victorious.”At the time, no results had been released, but a night that his campaign began with stoic confidence went better than it said it had hoped.Buttigieg will campaign with Donchess, his latest endorser, on Tuesday morning as part of an eight-stop day in New Hampshire.President Trump weighed in on the delayed results in Iowa on Tuesday morning, calling the Democratic caucuses “an unmitigated disaster.”“Nothing works, just like they ran the Country,” he said in a tweet that was critical of the cost of the launch of the website offering insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act.“The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is ‘Trump,’” Trump wrote.He easily prevailed in the Republican caucuses, winning about 97 percent support against former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld and former congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois.MANCHESTER, N.H. The party officials told the campaigns that they planned to release caucus results later on Tuesday and that they are hand-checking results, according to a person on the call.A second person on the call said Sanders senior adviser Jeff Weaver got into a tense exchange with Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price.Sean Bagniewski, chair of the Polk County Democratic Party, said that local officials were aware of problems with the app since last Thursday and that they had requested state officials resolve the problems — to no avail.“We knew the app was a problem last Thursday,” Bagniewski said.When local party officials asked the state party about issues they had with the app, they were referred to a “dedicated staffer” who was not able to solve the problems, he said.“We had had so many complaints about the app that we started telling our chairs that if they were having problems with the app then you should call in the results,” Bagniewski said.The state party did not provide any training on how to use the app, he said, adding that while the caucus trainings are done at the county level, the app itself came from the state level.Local officials had trouble downloading the app, getting a PIN to log in, and activating it even when they had a PIN, Bagniewski said.Then, when precinct chairmen tried to call the results in via the hotline, they were placed on hold for as long as two hours, he said.“When our chairs are calling, it’s a wait time of an hour and a half or two hours. It is really really hard to wrap our heads around it.”In 2016, the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t release its final results until just before 1 p.m. the day after the caucuses, after hours of dueling narratives about the outcome.Around 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 2, 2016, the day after the caucuses, the party noted in an email sent to reporters that Clinton was leading Sanders by just over four state delegate equivalents, with just one final precinct in Des Moines outstanding.In those early hours after the caucuses, Sanders campaign officials were still saying they would contest the results and the Associated Press was refusing to formally call the closest Iowa caucus in history.The state Democratic party would later release the final results just before 1 p.m. confirming that Clinton was the first woman ever to win the Iowa caucuses by just under 4 state delegate equivalents.Sanders’s team lasting frustration with the process help spur many of the changes that were implemented this year, including the decision to release raw vote totals for the first time ever instead of solely relying on the complicated formula that yields state delegate equivalents. The campaign statement said said it performed stronger in rural parts of the state than expected.His campaign said he reached viability in 83 percent of the caucuses that they got results for and that turnout was around 2016 levels – lower than records hit in 2008.The Sanders campaign said its results represented nearly 40 percent of precincts.“We recognize that this does not replace the full data from the Iowa Democratic Party, but we believe firmly that our supporters worked too hard for too long to have the results of that work delayed,” senior adviser Jeff Weaver said.According to the Sanders campaign results, Sanders performed best in the precincts they had, with about 29 percent of state delegate equivalents, followed by Buttigieg with 26 percent, Warren with 18 percent, Biden with 15 percent and Klobuchar with 11 percent.Warren strategist Joe Rospars criticized the release of numbers.Here’s what we know about what happened in Iowa:He also called the race “very close” between Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg and said Biden was “a distant fourth.”Polk County Democratic officials said they tried to deliver their results to the state party in person, after encountering problems with the new app they were supposed to use — but were turned away.Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats, said they initially decided the county’s 177 precinct chairs would call in results to the state party after encountering “issues” with a new reporting app.However, the state party hotline wasn’t working properly either, according to Bagniewski. “But we are built for the long haul.”Warren lingered in the room to take photos with her supporters before leaving to fly to New Hampshire, where she had a campaign event planned for Tuesday morning, her campaign said.Twitter will not require President Trump’s top political allies to delete tweets claiming that the Democratic caucus in Iowa is “rigged,” the tech company confirmed, raising fresh questions about its policies around voting.With official results delayed due to apparent technical troubles, Trump’s top supporters shared a series of tweets late Monday questioning the integrity of the voting process itself. These acute failures are occurring statewide.”The Biden campaign requested state party leaders provide “full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing, and an opportunity to respond, before any official results are released.”Meanwhile, Biden rallied his supporters with an anti-Trump speech amid the delay in results Monday night, telling the crowd that “character is on the ballot,” and that Democrats must bring “compassion over cruelty” and “truth over lies.”“Folks, each and every one of us knows that deep in our bones that everything this nation stands for is at stake,” Biden said, speaking from the Biden campaign headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, with his wife Jill alongside him.Bruce Koeppl, a Biden volunteer and a precinct captain for Biden at the Knapp Center said he was frustrated by the results.“As an Iowa Democrat, it’s very disappointing,” he said. Giant projector screens behind him showed a live stream of CNN, as he voiced confident notes.“Inconsistencies” in reporting three sets of results has led to a lack of official numbers from the Iowa Democratic party, more than three hours after Iowans started caucusing, officials said.Party leaders were supposed to report three sets of results from precincts Monday night: the original number of people who had aligned for a candidate, the numbers for each candidate upon realignment and the number of delegates awarded to each candidate.“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” Iowa Democratic party spokeswoman Mandy McClure said in a statement. He later spent more than an hour on hold trying to report his precinct results.Originally published at 11:34 p.m.Klobuchar addressed her supporters at the Des Moines Marriott Downtown, telling them that she’d be earned her place in the next primaries even though she didn’t yet know the results of the Iowa caucus.“We know there’s delays, but we know one thing — we are punching above our weight,” said Klobuchar, who was trailing the top four Democratic candidates but had moved up in the race’s final weeks. But there was plenty of frustration about what had happened to the vote count.“Iowa is the Broward County of caucuses,” joked Max Steele, a Klobuchar spokesman who’d previously worked for the Florida Democratic Party.Originally published at 11:28 p.m.DES MOINES — Warren volunteers, staff and friends gathered here, eagerly waiting for results while munching on turkey wraps and tomato toast with melted cheese at her caucus night party.“I cried all day today,” said Mary Horsman, 59, a Warren supporter who hosted an event for the campaign earlier at her Des Moines home. The problems began with the first alignment, when they kept getting an error while trying to send numbers.Shawn Sebastian, the caucus secretary for Story County Precinct 1-1, tweeted late Monday that he had been on hold for over an hour trying to report results from his precinct to the party hotline.”The app just straight up wasn’t working,” Sebastian told The Washington Post.Originally published at 11:14 p.m.As word spread that caucus results were being delayed due to “quality checks” by Democratic Party officials, Republicans suggested, with no evidence, that the contest was “rigged” against Sanders.Trump campaign officials and the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action tweeted on Monday night, with no proof, that Democratic Party officials were purposefully withholding the results to hurt Sanders’s chances.“Quality control = rigged?” tweeted Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.“JUST IN: The DNC rigged the primary for Hillary Clinton again,” America First super PAC tweeted.Quality control = rigged?