Democratic White House hopeful Pete Buttigieg seized a shock lead in the chaotic Iowa caucuses, closely trailed by leftist US Senator Bernie Sanders, according to partial returns released on Tuesday after an embarrassing delay in reporting the results.
Progressive standard-bearer US Senator Elizabeth Warren was in third place followed by former US vice president Joe Biden, a disappointing showing for Biden, who has claimed he is best positioned to defeat US President Donald Trump in November.
Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who has been battling Biden for the moderate wing of the party, hailed what he called an “astonishing victory” in the Midwestern farm state, which launches the presidential nominating process.
“I have never been more confident in our campaign, in our team and in the vision that brought to us this point,” Buttigieg told ecstatic supporters in New Hampshire, which holds the next nominating contest on Tuesday next week.
With polls still mixed on whether Americans would be comfortable with an openly gay president, Buttigieg also made a rare, although implicit, reference to his sexuality — and the added significance it gave the Iowa outcome.
“It validates for a kid, somewhere in a community, wondering if he belongs, or she belongs, or they belong in their own family, that if you believe in yourself and your country, there’s a lot backing up that belief,” he said with a catch in his voice.
According to the partial results, Buttigieg — unknown nationally a year ago — leads with 26.8 percent, followed by Sanders — the 78-year-old self-described democratic socialist — with 25.2 percent, Warren with 18.4 percent and Biden with 15.4 percent.
The centrist US Senator Amy Klobuchar was in fifth place on 12.6 percent, with 71 percent of the precincts reporting.
The results were posted about 21 hours after Iowans gathered across the state to hold the first vote of the presidential nominating season.
Iowa Democratic Party chairman Troy Price apologized profusely for the delay and blamed it on a “coding error” with an app being used for the first time to report the returns from precincts across the farm state.
Price pledged to provide the full results as soon as possible.
“We have been working day and night to make sure that the results are accurate,” he said. “And we also have a paper trail and documentation that we have been able to use to provide information to help verify the results.”
The results are usually known within hours of the conclusion of the caucuses, which do not involve a traditional ballot, but see voters attending public gatherings and voicing support for the candidate of their choice.
Iowa begins the process of selecting presidential nominees every four years, but the fiasco surrounding the results is likely to increase calls for the state to lose the honor.
“The top finishers, probably Sanders and Buttigieg, could have used their showings to launch into New Hampshire,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“Instead, the story is the shocking incompetence of the Iowa Democratic Party,” he added.
He called for an end to the “strange system in a 91 percent white state” in favor of giving other states a chance to launch the process.
US Senator Mark Warner expressed alarm over the Iowa debacle.
“This chaos has created an environment where misinformation is now running rampant online, further undermining confidence in the democratic process,” he said.
With Iowa still mired in confusion, the Democratic hopefuls turned their sights on New Hampshire.
A Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University poll released Monday found that Sanders is leading in the Granite State with 24 percent, followed by Biden on 18 percent, Warren with 13 percent and Buttigieg with 11 percent.
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