KEY POINTS

  • The Iowa caucuses were held Monday night but a glitch in vote-counting delayed the results until 4 p.m. Tuesday
  • The Iowa Democratic party still has not released the full results
  • The candidates already have put Iowa in the rear window, heading for New Hampshire, which holds its primary next Tuesday

As the Democratic presidential candidates deserted the Midwest Tuesday for New Hampshire and its first-in-the-nation primary next week, Iowa Democrats released partial results from their Monday night caucuses, delayed because of a technical glitch.

The results – accounting for about 62% of the votes cast – showed South Bend (Ind.) Mayor Pete Buttigieg leading with 362 state delegate equivalents, followed Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont with 337, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts with 246 and and former Vice President Biden with 210.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota tallied 169 state delegate equivalents, followed by businessmen Andrew Yang with 14 and Tom Steyer with 3. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, Sen. Mike Bennett of Colorado, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former Rep. Kevin Delaney of Maryland and former New York Mayor Michael Blooberg gained no delegate equivalents.

The raw vote totals were not available.

"My paramount concern is to make sure these results are accurate," said Troy Price, chairman of the state party.

Before heading for New Hampshire, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren expressed confidence in their performances while Biden’s campaign complained about the affect releasing just partial results would have.

Buttigieg declared victory.

“We were looking at the internal numbers we had and beginning to realize something extraordinary happened last night,” Buttigieg said Tuesday morning on MSNBC.

"We had a good night last night in Iowa. ... We don't know precisely how many delegates we have or how many we'll get, but I feel really good about getting more than our fair share," Biden said in New Hampshire.

Bloomberg, who decided against running in the early states to concentrate on Super Tuesday, took advantage of the Iowa chaos Tuesday, increasing his ad buy.

Democratic party officials scrambled to figure out what went wrong.

"This is simply a reporting issue … [not] a hack or an intrusion,” said Mandy McClure, the state party’s communications director.

State party officials blamed the debacle on a new app for reporting the results. To compound the problem, the backup phone line for calling in the results crashed. Party officials were careful to say the problem was not the result of hacking and also blamed new rules requiring three numbers instead of one to be reported at the county level.

Biden’s campaign said Americans deserve “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."

Instead of reporting real-time results, county organizations collected boxes of precinct preference cards for hand counting.

Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said the confusion in Iowa helps the former New York mayor’s bid, muddying the question of who the real frontrunner is.

Bloomberg opted against participating in the February caucuses and primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, concentrating his efforts on Super Tuesday states, which includes delegate rich California and Texas.

Iowa sends only 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, about 1% of the total.

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