Iowa caucus results: Sanders and Clinton 'in virtual tie' as Cruz beats Trump - as it happened

Clinton was given the fright of her life by the effective tie in Iowa, according to the Guardian’s updated wrap on the results.

The virtual tie in Iowa represents “a jolting psychological blow to the Clinton campaign”, according to Amy Chozick in the New York Times:

She writes that it left “volunteers, donors and aides confused throughout the night, and then crestfallen.”

They had hoped that the former secretary of state would garner a decisive victory here and put to rest any doubts about her strength as a candidate.

Instead, they now head to New Hampshire, where Mr. Sanders is heavily favored in the polls, and brace themselves for another loss before they reach more hospitable states like Nevada and South Carolina ...

The question the Clinton campaign confronts is whether the first two states are simply demographically unfriendly to Mrs. Clinton, as many analysts believe, or whether her lack of connection so far in Iowa and New Hampshire indicates a deeper shakiness underlying her candidacy.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden quips that money decided the Iowa election after all...

Clinton won all six coin tosses used to decide the vote. The Telegraph reckons the chances of doing this are around 1.6%.

The historical origin of coin flipping is the interpretation of a chance outcome as the expression of divine will, Aisha Gani notes.

Here’s how Iowa’s Des Moines Register summed up the vote on its front page.

Gary Younge’s picks out three similarities between the the Democratic and Republican Iowa results:

First, they are an undeniable and unequivocal rebuke to the party establishments. Cruz, an ideologically driven pious Texas senator, whose grandstanding in the senate has irritated his colleagues, is far more loathed by the Republican leaders than Trump. Add the 52% they got between them to the 9% who backed Ben Carson – the brain surgeon who claimed pyramids were for grain storage and called Vladimir Putin a “one-horse country” – and you have almost two-thirds of Iowans rejecting anything close to a consensus candidate who could unite the party.

Clinton had name recognition, money, a former president-husband, a previous presidential run and virtually the entire party machine on her side. This was supposed to be a coronation in which Sanders was cast as the jester: if there was a female equivalent of regicide, this would be it.

Second, the insurgent wings of both parties are redefining the contours of American politics. In 1999, after the release of his film Bulworth, I asked Warren Beatty if he was a socialist. He wouldn’t go near it. “Ideology seems to be so unfashionable,” he said. “So why not take advantage of it and not name oneself with a term that has become particularly problematic.” A poll earlier this month showed that 43% of Iowa Democrats defined themselves as socialists. We have no idea what to compare that with because it’s simply not a question anyone would have asked before Sanders came on the scene.

Among Republicans Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a young, telegenic candidate whose unexpectedly strong third place showing will make him the establishment favourite, has been cast as a moderate. That’s true if you compare him to Trump and Cruz, although judged by that yardstick Ronald Reagan and George W Bush would be moderates, too. But Rubio, an anti-abortionist and foreign policy hawk, was the Tea Party choice for Mitt Romney’s running mate just four years ago.

Third, we are now set for two long races stretching well into spring. The Republican race is fairly evenly split three ways between Trump, Cruz and Rubio; now that Sanders has proved himself viable some will now take a second look.The polls have not served us well thus far, but they predict that both Sanders andTrump will win New Hampshire next week, resetting the dial and recalibrating expectations. It is unlikely that either party will have settled on a nominee by Super Tuesday.

Summing up he adds:

Last night’s results lay bare the scale and depth of the realignment that has been taking place within the country for almost a generation: a polarisation of left and right that has made elections more volatile, politics more gridlocked and discourse more shrill. A socialist is in the running for the Democratic nomination; Donald Trump could be president. If these are the things we are saying in February, imagine what we might be saying come the Democratic and Republican conventions in July.

Heads of tails? Here’s footage of a coin toss used to decide the tight Democratic caucus in Iowa.

“We just got in from Iowa, where we astounded the world. And now in New Hampshire we’re going to astound the world again” Sanders told supporters at an impromptu early morning rally. Dan Roberts filmed the moment on his phone.

Sanders is talking to supporters in New Hampshire who have been waiting to welcome him in a freezing parking lot for the last three hours, Dan Roberts reports.

The Republican result is neatly summed up in a limerick from Anthony Lawton.

With the Democratic result almost too close to call, Sanders has not ruled out putting in a challenge.

The race was so tight that several precincts were forced to decide whether Clinton or Sanders got the winning votes - and one more delegate - by a coin toss, following the state Democratic Party’s advice.

After flying into New Hampshire, Sanders told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt that he didn’t know whether his campaign would contest the result.

On the plane he told reporters that raw vote details should be released.

What just happened in Iowa? The Guardian’s video team has put together a two-minute guide ...

MPs in the UK have been expressing relief at Donald Trump’s failure in Iowa.

Labour moderate Chuka Umunna, who was briefly a party leadership candidate, said he was pleased by the result, sarcastically adding it “couldn’t happen to a nicer man”.

Albert Owen, MP for the Welsh seat of Ynys Môn, expressed similar sentiments.

But actor and comedian, David Schneider, cautioned against leftwing relief at the result of the Republican caucus, by pointing out the rightwing credentials of the winner Ted Cruz.

Meanwhile, the unexpectedly strong showing of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic caucus is being seen as boost for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Jon Trickett, shadow secretary of state for communities and local government, describes Sanders’ performance in Iowa as “more remarkable” than Trump’s failure.

Are you sensing a pattern here? asked former MP George Galloway.

But Jamie Reed, the Labour MP who resigned as a member of the shadow cabinet as soon as Corbyn was elected leader, predicts that the Clinton team will use Corbyn’s record as leader as a warning to Democrats not to back Sanders.

This blog isn’t going into cold storage. We’ve decided to keep things simmering over from London while our US team takes a break.

Mona Chalabi and Alberto Nardelli report on how the polls failed to predict the Iowa caucus results.

It looks like Marco Rubio, who was expected to take around 17% of vote, will have actually walked home with 23% by the time all votes are counted. And the Hillary Clinton victory by a four percentage point margin ahead of Bernie Sanders failed to materialise – instead, the two candidates appear to have finished neck and neck. In the end, even turnout was a bit of a surprise; 5.6% higher than in 2012 according to exit polling from Edison Media Research.

But it’s premature to forecast the demise of polling accuracy based on those errors. For one thing, general election polls tend to perform better while caucuses are notoriously difficult to predict – there are just so many uncertainties about everything from weather (would snow keep people at home?) to the effect college term dates might have on turnout.

Have you visited www.loser.com?

The Washington Post expands on the many people Donald Trump has deemed a “loser” and the number of times he has done it:

RedState’s Erick Erickson is a total loser who “has a history of supporting establishment losers in failed campaigns,” according to Donald Trump, who didn’t want to go to Erickson’s stupid meeting anyway and is probably glad he got banned, just as he’s glad that Macy’s ended its relationship with him. Trump has no time for losers like Erickson, and like the thousands of other losers he has identified over the last few years.

Like Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie O’Donnell is a true loser and a total loser. George Will is also a loser. Beauty queen Sheen Monnin is a loser. People without egos are losers. Seriously. The online magazine Salon is a loser, as is the Huffington Post and the Patch.

Read the full piece here. (h/t: @monachalabi & @popovichn)

Let’s brace ourselves and take another gander at the results on the Democratic side in the Iowa caucuses.

99.41% reporting, it looks like. Still that same two-tenths-of-one-percent spread, with Clinton at 49.8 and Sanders at 49.6.

And now there’s a tarmac standoff? Both Democratic candidates are trying to get out of Iowa and leave this star-crossed caucus behind. But who goes first? The winner? Who would that be? The Guardian’s Dan Roberts, aboard the flying Sanders bus:

Here’s full-length footage of the only speech in favor of former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, the longshot-doesn’t-capture-it Republican presidential candidate, that we’ve been able to dig up from the 900-some Republican caucus sites in the state of Iowa this evening.

N.B.: Gilmore did not receive any votes as a result of this nevertheless rousing speech.

(h/t: @bencjacobs)

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, she apparently can’t lose a coin flip. Does that alone qualify her to be president? Seems like.

Read the Des Moines Register’s reporting on this quaint solution to apparently quite a few hung precincts:

Unable to account for that numerical discrepancy and the orphan delegate it produced, the Sanders campaign challenged the results and precinct leaders called a Democratic Party hot line set up to advise on such situations.

Party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss.

Now in Iowa, on the Democratic side: 99.05% reporting. By our math that leaves less than 1% outstanding. And the tally is Clinton 49.8%, Sanders 49.6%. Which, there are enough votes outstanding to close that gap. So let’s not call this thing prematurely, shall we?

The pageant of democracy, a rapt audience, empowered collegians and what sounds like a big time hot mess in certain precincts in the Hawkeye state:

Pollster woes. The gold-standard Des Moines Register / Bloomberg News poll of Saturday had Trump winning by 5 points and Clinton winning by 3 points. Polling averages had Trump up 4.7 points and Clinton up 4 points.

But: Cruz won by 4 points and the Democratic race appears to have concluded in a virtual tie.

Sanders is already fundraising off of his come-from-behind tie in Iowa:

Even in a much simpler contest like the Democratic race, there are no easy answers. When it comes to Berniementum, here’s all you need to know: he’s totally winning, except he isn’t – not yet.

As it stands, it looks like Iowa will be an all-but even split between Clinton and Sanders. That’s what the results of the democratic process look like, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the mathematics of elections begin and end with the delegate count. But of course, like the endless drag that was the 2008 contest, Clinton leads Sanders in wrapping up “super delegates”, which will pose a problem for him as time goes on.

That said, most people don’t know about the super delegates in the Democratic nominating process so, to the average voter out there, Sanders really does have some momentum going. Fighting Clinton to a draw in Iowa counts as a victory compared to where he came from – nowhere, with no press attention, no money and no establishment support (as he noted in his speech).

When you couple tonight’s results with what could be a rout of Clinton in New Hampshire, it’s possible that Sanders could go into South Carolina with the buzz and name recognition that can start to make inroads with minority voters and eat away at the polling advantage that Clinton has largely by dint of familiarity, not policy.

There are plenty of reasons for Sanders supporters to be optimistic about this outcome, next week’s New Hampshire primary and a change in perception about Bernie with voters who largely aren’t too familiar with him. But if they want to win, they’d better hold the champagne and commence a couple more months of door-knocking.

Hang on... it’s coming to me... it was only like two hours ago... I know this...

The Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum notes a first for Sanders, who appears to have split Iowa’s 44 Democratic delegates almost exactly 50-50 with Clinton:

Sticker kid. If you don’t know, get to know.

At 32 minutes and counting, even the Fox News feed cut away from the Ted Cruz victory speech. At 37 minutes, he was apparently still going.

Whether it worked was entirely dependent on your point of you. If you don’t subscribe to Cruz’s particular blend of nativist Christian apocalypse, it varied at best between torpor and weirdness.

Cruz kept the crowd amped down with his delivery, going through his normal steps of breathless whispering (either in regret or awe), greater intensity (whether in ardor or anger), and suddenly squaring up and de-liv-er-ing with par-tic-u-lar emphasis. Just when you’d have thought he was reaching a crescendo, he reset. There wasn’t a rising tide of energy but rather something nearly mechanical.

As for the weirdness, Cruz put the focus on his family by turning to them and telling him that he loved them, which is a human expression that humans use. He turned his back to the crowd, grasped his mother’s hand and said that he campaigned with “the knowledge that whatever I might do that whatever I might say, my mother loves me”, which makes one wonder what he worries about doing or saying. He then turned to a cousin, who he said he loved like a sister, which is also a human expression that humans say, and called her “Beebs”.

In keeping with the tone of modern conservatism, this was less a victory speech than an iteration of resentments and victimizations. What victory occurred was that “the next president of the United States will not be chosen by the media … the Washington establishment … the lobbyists.” That, to quote scripture from (I dunno) Seven Corinthians, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning ... and Iowa has proclaimed to the world: morning is coming, morning is coming.”

The invocation was Reaganesque in that, like much of Cruz’s pitch, it echoed familiar Reaganisms – in this case, “morning in America.”

But after that enjoyment, he plunged the crowd into marketable dread. Washington, he told them, is scared of them and of the old Reagan coalition, which he believes somehow dissolved between 1988 and today (instead of being the revanchist core of the Republican Party ever since). And he would need them to change the country from this state of disorder that besieged them, from “an Attorney General who sides with the criminals and looters instead of the brave men and women of law enforcement”.

Criminals and looters! It’s 1968 in America, whatever time of day it is. Enjoy this moment and then get back to work, because everything is burning.

Carly Fiorina is a no-show at her own caucus party, according to a local TV reporter. :/

(h/t: @jonswaine)

With 95% reporting on the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders are back to a two-tenths-of-one-percentage-point gap.

And some professional counters are starting to say we won’t know “tonight” -- or this morning – how this comes out:

Sanders says he has a “radical idea”: create an economy that “works for working families and not just the rich classes!”

Sanders says he’s moved that the campaign has received 3.5m individual contributions. And the average contribution was “TWENTY-SEVEN DOLLARS!”

We do not represent the interest the interests of the billionaire class, Wall Street or corporate interest. We don’t want their money. And I’m very proud to tell you that we are the only candidate on the Democratic side without a super Pac.

Sanders says he’s doing well because “the American people are saying ‘no’ to a rigged economy.”

Watch Bernie Sanders here:

Bernie Sanders is to speak at his Des Moines rally soon. Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts is in the room.

“As the numbers close again to just 0.2% they put on Bernie’s fight song,” Dan writes. “They’ve all come to look for America,” they sing.

With 93.58% reporting on the Democratic side, Sanders is trailing Clinton now by only seven-tenths of a percentage point.

(h/t: @claire_phipps)

Here’s video of Marco Rubio’s victory speech – he came in third – earlier:

As Iowa heads towards a near dead heat between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, a video on Twitter from earlier tonight shows how a toin coss decided the destiny of one delegate in an Iowa basketball court. “Tails ... Our official delegate for this precinct is Hillary Clinton.”

We’re still waiting on results from Polk county, the largest in Iowa - by a long way. With a population to close to half a million, one in seven Iowans live here.

Watch Ted Cruz’s victory speech here:

With 91.73% reporting in the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by nine-tenths of a percentage point.

Just gonna leave this (admittedly old) tweet right here and not say anything.

Oh no, wait, he was so committed to this quote, he said it again six months later.

Martin O’Malley has been gone for months, but he’s made it official, in one of those solemn foregone rituals that you only see on political campaigns. It’s fundamentally bizarre to make a man get on a stage on national television and force him to acknowledge his failure (beyond all the ways that votes and donors and access have made him acknowledge it already), but we still do it. It feels a little like interviewing the losing team just seconds after the game ends.

Then again, watching it is probably enjoyable to plenty of people, especially if you had a family member in Baltimore who was caught up in the drug war.

O’Malley’s last debate performances telegraphed this end: they were likely meant to make him seem like he was more determined than ever, but instead devolved into something alienatingly desperate. Grasping for relevance in a two-person race, he started turning against each potential frontrunner, taking one side against the other, and then reversing himself, repeating, nipping at their heels.

O’Malley’s willingness to switch allegiances in the span of minutes and take, at best, petty swipes, helped him trivialize himself. It’s easy now to just turn him into a joke about a guy without a shirt or a guy with a guitar.

In a different election, O’Malley might have had a great, wide lane to sit in, but he couldn’t run to the right of Clinton or anywhere to the left of Sanders. Instead, in an election that became dominated by transformative politics – either about identity or class – he was another slightly left-of-center white dude.

Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts is at a raucous watch party for Bernie Sanders in Des Moines. The crowd is cheering every blurp from the TV, which is tracking Sanders climb from a mere 3-point second-place position to a straight-up tenths-of-a-percentage-point-tie.

“They both can claim victory,” says David Axelrod, the former top Barack Obama political adviser, on CNN. “This is a good night for Bernie Sanders.”

Dan reports:

Late Monday night in Des Moines, a crowd was watching Sanders push ahead from 0.2% points down, to a tie on the television overhead and finally a stunning push ahead as the final precincts called it for the declared socialist.

“Bernie,” roared one side of the room. “Sanders,” roared the other. “Bernie,” they yelled. “Sanders,” came the response of a self-proclaimed revolution vindicated.

Maybe, in the grand scheme of things, Iowa doesn’t count. Politicos are forever reminding us of all the candidates – from Ronald Reagan to George HW Bush to Bill Clinton– who lost in Iowa but still went on to become president.

But tonight matters, because it could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bernie Sanders really could be a viable alternative to Hillary Clinton. If he were to only win in New Hampshire next week – polls show he very well might – it could be chalked up to regional favoritism. An Iowa win, though, would look like momentum, like the beginning of a political force that has been sorely underestimated.

Ever since he declared an interest in the presidency, Sanders been alternately derided and fawned over for his long shot status but what both reactions had in common were that nobody took him seriously or saw the potential explosiveness of his campaign. He was mocked for his age and accent and eccentric mannerisms, but the irascible senator from Vermont has known his value all along. “Way back when, I don’t know if you heard it, I said: ‘Don’t underestimate me. Don’t underestimate me,’” he told NBC in a segment on his surprise success.

Well we shouldn’t be surprised anymore. And if Hillary is defeated in an upset in Iowa, she just lost her most powerful argument for the presidency: pragmatism.

Ted Cruz’s plan worked.

He was never supposed to be the party front-runner; that mantle was supposed to fall to Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or another establishment pick.

But Cruz saw something that the establishment missed – namely that the voter anger into which Donald Trump had tapped is powerful and real. So, too, is the the xenophobia, and Cruz found a way to reach those voters and make himself the politically-adept alternative to Trump.

The wonder is that Trump ever held his punches against Cruz, only finally deigning to attack him in earlier debates in exchange for similar treatment from Cruz. Trump finally did go negative, but in a rare political miscalculation, he may have waited too long. Another possible misstep: GOP insiders are saying Trump alienated voters by skipping out on the Republican debate last week, calling the move “petulant” and “whiny.”

It’s the rare case where the pundits may have been right all along in saying that Trump’s fall was only a matter of time, despite his seemingly inevitable rise the polls. Cruz, in swooping in like he did, may have seen not only what Trump’s voters saw in him, but what the party establishment and pollsters could not.

Trump gives a consummately gracious speech:

On June 16, when we started this journey, I was told by everybody, do not go to Iowa.

They said don’t do it, I said I have to do it.

And, we finished second, and let me tell you something, I’m honored, I’m just honored. I want to congratulate Ted, and I want to congratulate Mike Huckabee, who’s become a really good friend of mine.

We’re just so happy with the way everything’s worked out.

Then Trump turns to the topic of his polling strength in New Hampshire, and he predicts he will be the nominee:

I don’t know who’s going to win between Bernie and Hillary. Hillary’s got other problems, maybe bigger problems than the one she’s got in terms of nominations.

We will go on to easily beat Bernie, or Hillary, or whoever the hell we throw up there.

We will be back many, many times. In fact, I think I might come here and buy a farm.

Thank you.

That would be a half-point race on the Democratic side, with 88.64% reporting. Clinton 49.9-Sanders 49.4.

Low whistle.

If Cruz does take Iowa, as he’s now predicted to, maybe this song will be playing in Republican homes across America tonight. Then again, maybe not.

The story so far isn’t just about Donald Trump under-performing, it’s also about Marco Rubio exceeding expectations. The last time I looked at polling averages, Rubio was supposed to be trailing well behind in third place with just 17% of the vote. So far though, Rubio has 22% of the vote and has a real chance of taking second place. And with only two thirds reporting so far, there’s still a chance - albeit a very slim one - that he might even still take Iowa.

There’s a tightening on the Democratic side – a 1-point race with 78% reporting. Tight!

It looks like a huge turnout night on the Republican side. Such a scenario was meant to play to Trump’s favor, on the theory that a large share of the excitement attached to the Republican race – the yuge debate viewership, the crowded rallies – was in fact excitement attached to Trump.

That may still be the case – Trump is running a very strong second, with 62.34% reporting on the Republican side and big precincts yet to report. He may yet catch Cruz.

One reader was curious about why we’re talking about Iowa tonight - why isn’t some other US state the one to kick off the presidential election?

This is a hotly contested question but it’s one that has never really been definitively answered since 1972, when Iowa first won this honor. And it’s an honor that the state tried to ensure that it would keep. Section 43.4 of the Iowa Code, the codified record of the state’s legislation, states that:

The date [of the caucus] shall be at least eight days earlier than the scheduled date for any meeting, caucus or primary which constitutes the first determining stage of the presidential nominating process in any other state, territory or any other group which has the authority to select delegates in the presidential nomination.

Just because it’s law though, doesn’t mean it’s not reversible and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s not contentious. Writing in the Washington Post, Timothy M. Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa argues that the intimate setting in Iowa allows candidates to really engage with voters.

The Iowa caucuses provide advantages that other systems or starting in bigger states would not. One is that starting in Iowa, a relatively small state in which it is less-expensive to run a campaign, allows candidates who are not as well-known or who do not have a large warchest to still be competitive and get their start. A second advantage is that the caucus campaign process gives candidates the opportunity to meet and interact with a wide variety of average voters in ways they would not be able to in a large or expensive state. Candidates have the opportunity to find out what people outside their usual political bubble think about the issues.

This week, National Public Radio looked at five different factors to measure which other states might be better suited for the role. When they looked at median age, household income, religiosity, education and racial makeup, the most all-American state in America was in fact Illinois.

According to exit polls being reported by NBC news, some of the predictions have proven true (so far at least).

Bernie Sanders is a runaway winner among Iowa’s youngest Democrats, for example:

Want to track the results in a more granular way, county-by-county, with colorful interactive maps? We imagine you do, and that’s why we’d direct you to our comprehensive Iowa caucus results page.

Here’s what the maps look like at the moment:

With Donald Trump only 4.6 points down, in second place, behind Ted Cruz, in first place, in the Iowa Republican caucuses with 47.23% reporting, we have a hard time understanding why this would be the case, via Guardian West Coast bureau chief Paul Lewis:

It turns out “We Don’t Know What’s Going To Happen” is, for the most part, the same show no matter who’s directing and who you cast in it.

Fox News does not know what is going to happen, but is very excited about that thing, whatever it is, happening. CNN does not know what is going to happen, but they are watching it happening or not happening very closely. MSNBC keeps wanting to hold a roundtable discussion of political history and keeps getting dragged back to field reports and the absence of results, and the actual caucus is the worst part of it. Why they don’t just have Steve Kornacki and Rachel Maddow talking about whatever they think is interesting is beyond me.

If CNN has a standout message, it’s that Bernie Sanders is not a credible longterm candidate. (I’ve watched them for hours today, and you couldn’t roll more thumbs onto that scale if you were lopping off a bunch of bros’ hailing digits in a frat slaughterhouse.) There’s a longer discussion we could have here about how media “analysis” creates a self-fulfilling narrative, but in the meantime let’s just write this off as network that, in the absence of certainty, runs home to Beltway hack wisdom.

John King has his graphs, as ever, and Wolf Blitzer is speak-shouting strings of words in every direction like an under-medicated man who is ruining your bus ride. Typically, Jake Tapper is bringing momentary relief from the madness before it gets thrown to the panels and results. There is not enough Jake Tapper.

You’d think Fox would be unbearable, but they usually do well when it comes to moving the camera around to different people and results. (Their data appears to be lagging behind CNN’s, but it doesn’t matter.) As soon as the to-do list gets big enough, it crowds out their opinions, and you can see why these people originally were given jobs.

Perversely, Fox seems to be treating Sanders with the most respect of all (even the “lefty” MSNBC is mostly Clintonista in outlook and tends to return to “viability” questions pretty often), but then Fox would most likely prefer to have Sanders to run against, so going the CNN route and trivializing him only undermines potential future “HAMMERS AND SICKLES!” narratives.

The most obvious narrative to which Fox keeps returning is the Rubio Surge^TM! He was up in a recent Quinnipiac poll, so this could be his night! (It’s not.) A three-way race is more exciting and Fox, like the rest of the Republican establishment, would probably prefer not to have any more Trump headaches or deal with the nearly-universally loathed Cruz. Rubio is still the most telegenic not-establishment establishment candidate, and he would make the party’s (and Fox’s) job much, much easier.

As ever, the best thing the average person can do is just watch C-SPAN, where you can watch neighbors try to cajole each other into switching their votes. You can pick a Democratic or a Republican feed, if you want. (For those new to the political news biz, that split is not telling.) Either one is great.

Results on the Republican side from major counties remain unreported, Ben Jacobs points out. Dallas Co. is Des Moines, Linn Co. is Cedar Rapids and Dubuque Co. is ... Dubuque:

Here are those counties, left to right: Dallas, Linn, Dubuque:

What a tight couple of races. Almost half reporting on the Democratic side and it’s a three-point race. A quarter reporting on the Republican side and it’s also a three-point race. Follow real-time results right up there atop the blog. We’re about 90 minutes in on Iowa caucus night!

Somewhere in Iowa, a lone voice is heard for Jim Gilmore, the former Virginia governor who is making an unlikely insurgent bid for the nomination.

And if the praise is faint, it issues self-evidently from the heart:

Continuing their blitz of Des Moines-area caucus sites, the Guardian’s Paul Lewis and Ben Jacobs report on the hotly contested race:

From Valley Church in west Des Moines, Paul Lewis said that Clinton had a roughly 2-1 advantage over Sanders:

Meanwhile, Ben Jacobs is at a Democratic caucus across town, where Sanders and Clinton tied each other – not just with delegates but in actual voters:

They both received 4 delegates from precinct 31 but each ended up having 73 supporters. Sanders benefited from the fact that of the 6 O’Malley supporters present, 4 backed him. The other two just left.

We’re up to 34.27 reporting on the Democratic side and 15.35% reporting on the Democratic side. Clinton has about 4 points on Clinton and Cruz has a point-and-a-half on Trump. Rubio appears to be running nicely.

But the fish get bigger as the night goes on:

Now why might that be the case?

The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs continues his blitz of Des Moines-area caucus sites:

Dan Roberts has just returned to a Bernie Sanders campaign party in Des Moines, where ... there’s no one there yet.

The caucus I went to around the corner was a fascinating glimpse of how close his battle with Clinton may turn out to be later tonight though.

In what appeared to be a swing precinct - a suburb of Des Moines that voted for Obama in 2008 but with an older demographic that appears to favour Clinton - the voting went to Bernie by a whisker.

After O’Malley and undecided voters mostly switched to Sanders, he ended up with 69 votes against 68 for Clinton.

The precinct chair attempted to split the seven delegates in half, awarding 3.5 each, but after protests from the Sanders camp and a phone call to party officials, he relented and awarded 4 delegates to Sanders and 3 to Clinton.

Storms are brewing in Iowa tonight and not just politically.

An epic blizzard is due to hit from Arizona to Wisconsin, and the National Weather Service released a statement earlier today warning of snow in Iowa.

“Blizzard conditions and heavy snow to impact Iowa late tonight through early Wednesday morning,” it reads.

There were concerns that bad weather would keep potential voters away tonight - or force them to leave early - but so far that doesn’t seem to be a big issue.

Weather.com predicts light snow in southern and western Iowa tonight, with heavy snow to hit tomorrow morning.

Currently in Des Moines it’s 35F (2C) and cloudy.

Here’s a good example of how squishy these early numbers are: with additional Republican precincts reporting – 4.05% now – Ted Cruz has squeaked ahead of Trump for a 31-30% lead.

You might ignore these numbers for another half hour or so. But if you’d rather experience caucus night as a rollercoaster series highs and lows, instead of a gradually coalescing vector pointing toward one winner on each side – by all means keep a close eye on the results tracker at the top of this blog.

Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, gets a boost from the junior senator from South Carolina, the third state to vote for a nominee (via National Journal):

“We think it’s going to very close,” Bernie Sanders senior adviser Tad Devine says on TV.

How close? We’ll turn it over to our editor-at-large Gary Younge inside the Des Moines state historical society in Des Moines:

Final tally here: Clinton has 83 delegates ... and Sanders has 84.

Must have been luck for this Bernie supporter at left, who tried to woo an uncommitted (there have only been a handful across town) by explaining the Sanders record of fighting terror.

Still, every hand up counted here tonight for the Sanders momentum machine.

What happens when someone on the fence turns for Sanders? Paul Lewis sends this – because this is what happens when someone starts to Feel the Bern:

The Guardian’s Dan Roberts found an exciting caucus site in suburban Des Moines, where a single voter separates Sanders and Clinton. See Dan’s video of persuasion in action from inside the caucus here.

The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs is at a Republican caucus site for precinct 31 in Des Moines, and reports a story of big turnout and an influx of new caucus participants:

Remember, the Republicans in Iowa use a secret ballot, unlike the Democrats, who use the scrum method.

They also use steam tables:

Ben with results from the district, where Trump has carried the day:

Update:

Florida senator Marco Rubio tries a little last-minute, in-person suasion:

Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts is inside a Democratic caucus site in suburban Des Moines. Bernie Sanders appears to be edging Hillary Clinton at the site, in the early counting.

Dan sends this video, of a Clinton precinct captain counting votes:

And here’s a snapshot in miniature of the drama playing out across the state at Democratic caucus sites tonight: rival precinct captains attempting to sway undecided voters:

If you’re doing the whole two screen thing, you might be watching news reports talking about “heavy turnout”. That could well be true (and might have a big impact on results if so) but I’d exercise a little bit of caution on this. Often those reports are from TV journalists who are eyeballing the number of Iowans sat in various locations.

How well can you tell the difference between a room with say, 200 people, and one with 300? In some places, that difference is the difference between average and historically high turnout.

We all know that Ben Carson is no good at doing passion, or anger. He’s not even that good at opening his eyes properly. Oh, and he also sounds like Winnie-the-Pooh.

But what you might not know is that his Twitter feed is arguably even more underwhelming than listening to him speak.

The days before the caucus are the time to use your social media presence – Carson has more than 1m followers – to urge people to vote for you. To hammer your message home.

But Carson’s efforts to get people to vote are almost heartbreakingly wretched.

Look at this tweet, for example. I had to read it three times before I realized he was talking about himself:

This is along the same lines. Carson isn’t even asking people to vote for him. He’s asking people to consider voting for him. Just consider it, please. Just tell me you’ll at least consider it. Please.

I get it: he isn’t a blood and thunder candidate. His tweets reflect that. It’s just ... surely they don’t have to be so upsettingly benign.

Snapchat offers a little insight into how candidates spent the final day leading into the caucus and also a little insight into the inane world of campaigning and bored social media editors.

From Trumpville, here’s an interview with Donald Trump Jr, who hasn’t spoken to his father today but did just speak with Guardian West Coast bureau chief Paul Lewis about evangelicals, turnout and more in West Des Moines.

“We’re just going to wing it and see how it feels,” Trump’s son told the Guardian. “It could be a total disaster – it could be horrible, but I doubt it.”

Watch a quick clip of our chat here:

There were lines outside the evangelical church, and when proceedings began, the temporary chair of the caucus, George Wood, said there had been an “extra large number of on-site registrations”.

He didn’t say it, but that is especially good news for Trump, who polls suggest has the highest proportion of first-time caucus-goers.

Not enough Trump family for you? Check out Paul’s weekend adventures hunting alongside the Trump sons in Iowa – with more video ...

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On the Hillary Clinton beat this evening – and possibly until November, though we’ll see about that – is Guardian US political reporter Sabrina Siddiqui. Here’s her first dispatch of caucus night, from Des Moines:

With the countdown to the Iowa caucus having begun, Leanne Dilornzo burst through the door. This was one of dozens of organizing stations across the state, with thousands of volunteers hustling for Hillary Clinton – and ready to spring into action.

“I just got here from Portland, Oregon,” she said, catching her breath, to the local staffers who were checking in volunteers at the door. “How can I help?”

It was but one glimpse of the frenzied scene on the ground in Iowa on Monday evening, as precious time slipped away to ensure that voters would head out to caucus for Clinton.

Dilornzo, who runs a nonprofit, said she was supposed to get in on Sunday, but she almost didn’t make it due to flight complications. Her travel was rebooked at least three times, but she was determined to get there.

A longtime fan of Clinton’s and supporter of her 2008 run, Dilornzo nodded to the tight race between the former secretary of state and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

“I was just a little worried and wanted to do something,” she said.

At this particular office, tucked inside the second floor of a strip mall just outside downtown Des Moines, volunteers were doing many things beyond worrying: putting together packets containing instructions for caucus-goers, working the phones one last time.

An array of snacks were scattered along the tables to keep them fueled: sandwiches, fruits and assorted pastries. Posters and drawings on the walls served as motivators: The words “Energize. Organize. Win,” strewn across one wall, and the pledge “I will give my all for Hillary today” on another.

Rebecca Lipson, one of the campaign’s Iowa organizers, said volunteers began flowing in from 9am on this all-important day.

“We’re making sure that everyone knows where their caucus is, that they have a ride to get there, and that they’re ready to caucus for Hillary,” she said.

Most of the help came from locals, but in the final days people had descended upon Des Moines from Chicago, New York and even China.

A 16-year-old student from China, who identified by his English name Steven Jefferson, was in the state as part of a visiting youth leadership tour. He and some of the other people in his group, who had come to observe the Iowa caucuses, had an opportunity to choose to volunteer for a candidate.

Jefferson said he chose Clinton because of what he said was unparalleled experience.

“After I heard her speak, I knew she was confident enough for the job,” he said. “I think she’s powerful and she cares about her citizens through her policies – to treat women equally, raise incomes and decrease taxes.”

Yuyan Liu, the chancellor who was leading the student group, sat a few feet away dialing a phone from a list of names.

Liu said he recalled fondly the Bill Clinton presidency and was particularly impressed by Hillary Clinton’s advocacy as first lady.

“I think it would be really positive to have the first woman president of the United States,” added.

More from Guardian US data editor Mona Chalabi on the data dynamics underlying tonight’s caucus process:

Shy Trump voters?

When polls spectacularly failed to predict the outcome of the UK election, one explanation was that there were “shy Tories” who were reluctant to tell polling companies of their true voting intentions. I know, I know, you might expect Trump’s diehard supporters to be the shy type, but images from rallies can be very misleading. There will no doubt be some Americans who feel sympathy for the policies being advocated by the businessman but are reluctant to make those views known. Yet again, everything comes back to the demographics of turnout. If those voters stay at home in Iowa, then their silent support won’t make a difference.

Back after a break of 48 years – a Trump supporter arrives to caucus in Iowa:

Here’s part 2/3 (see earlier) of Guardian US data editor Mona Chalabi’s pre-caucus observations and admonitions:

If polling is correct, this will be an exciting night

Looking at polling averages, Hillary Clinton is three to four percentage points ahead of her nearest rival, Bernie Sanders. For Republicans, it would seem Donald Trump has a more comfortable lead - he’s five to seven percentage points ahead of Ted Cruz.

Whether or not those victories materialize will depend on how many people turn out and which demographic groups they belong to. Both Sanders and Trump tend to be more popular among first-time Caucus goers. Those aren’t necessarily the most reliable people to actually show up on the night.

The latest polls provide a slightly confusing last minute picture of what Iowa is thinking. An Emerson College Polling Society poll suggests that Trump and Cruz are actually neck and neck with only one percentage point between them, but another one from Quinnipiac University suggests that Trump actually leads by seven percentage points. Quinnipiac is generally regarded as a more reliable pollster - but still, both sets of numbers have that all-important margin of error (+/-5.6 percentage points for Emerson, +/-3.3 percentage points for Quinnipiac).

How many people participate in the Iowa caucuses? Not that many, considering the intense national focus on the vote, and its potential influence on nominee selection.

Here are some recent caucuses turnout figures, via Drake University’s Iowa Caucus project:

Democrats in 2008 (Obama): 239,872

Democrats in 2004 (Kerry): 124,331

Republicans in 2012 (Santorum): 121,503

Republicans in 2008 (Huckabee): 119,200

Will tonight be a 120,000-voter night – or a 240,000 voter night? (Iowa population=~3m.) And who stands to benefit?

Iowans backing Bernie:

“He’s off the charts, he’s off the grid, I think he’s going to surprise a lot of people” – Servant of the Moon

Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts rubs wings with the jet set in Des Moines:

If you’re like a lot us, you can’t get enough explanatory material when it comes to the Iowa caucuses. Fortunately, Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs has your back:

What time do the caucuses start?

The caucuses start at 7pm local time on Monday, but campaigns encourage their supporters to show up half an hour early.

How do the caucuses unfold?

Very different rules govern the Democratic and Republican caucuses:

• Republicans have a relatively straightforward process, in which they cast secret ballots in their precinct caucuses – church halls, school buildings.
• By contrast, Democrats vote publicly in a two-stage election where candidates must get support of 15% of caucus-goers in each individual precinct to be viable. If they fall below that threshold, their voters need to choose another candidate or go home. After that redistribution, votes are counted and from those totals, delegates are assigned.

Can unregistered voters take part?Any Iowan over the age of 18 can participate. Attendees can register on the night at the caucuses and can switch their party affiliation there as well. This means a Democrat can go to the Republican caucuses and vice versa. Four years ago, 121,503 people showed up to the 2012 Republican caucuses. Democrats have traditionally had higher turnout and, in their last competitive caucus in 2008, 239,872 people attended.

What happens then? The caucuses are political party-run processes with no state involvement, so the reporting of results doesn’t happen through state election officials. Instead, local volunteers at each caucus location across Iowa’s 99 counties report them. This means there can potentially be many hiccups:

• For Republicans, the ballots are tallied and counted at each caucus site and reported to the state party.
• Under the Democratic system, only the actual number of delegates pledged to each candidate is reported and not any actual vote counts.
• Barring reporting issues, a clear idea of the results should emerge by around 9.30pm local time.

There more where that came from:

We’re about to get the first numbers of this election that aren’t hypothetical, writes Guardian US data editor Mona Chalabi:

Which is great timing because I’m already getting tired of polls that are all about what people say they might do and getting very curious about what Americans are actually going to decide when it comes down to it.

Here are some things you should know before those results start rolling in (part 1/ 3):

Does Iowa matter?

The state is not representative of US politics as a whole, not least because it’s a whole lot more white than the rest of the country:

What’s more, the complex procedures for voting in a caucus mean that people who bother to show up in Iowa are probably a little more politically enthusiastic than your average voter.

But most commentators are pretty convinced that what happens in this caucus has big consequences for the rest of the election. That ranges from the very concrete possibility that some candidates might drop out once these results are declared (Martin O’Malley, I’m looking at you), to more subtle effects - things like the fact that results here could well affect the media narrative about candidates. And media narratives could in turn affect voter choices.

The count won’t be perfect

Hopefully we won’t see a repeat performance of 2012 when a truck containing a bunch of votes simply went astray and held up the count. But even if all vehicles stay on route, counting will invariably be affected by some degree of mechanical and human error - so, as Hayley Munguia at FiveThirtyEight cautions, remember that the final results won’t be perfectly accurate.

Campaigns are urging supporters to pop up at caucus sites with time to spare before the 7pm (local, 8pm ET) starts.

That’s early enough that the blizzard warning scheduled to go into effect in Iowa later tonight may not be dissuasive for voters still deciding whether to devote hours of their Monday evenings to nominee selection.

But potential voters visiting the National Weather Service web site out of Des Moines might not be encouraged to get in their cars and drive out into the night– or is it just the caps lock that makes it sound exciting?:

BLIZZARD CONDITIONS AND HEAVY SNOW TO IMPACT IOWA LATE TONIGHT THROUGH EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING...

TIMING...SNOW WILL SPREAD ACROSS SOUTHWEST IOWA LATE TONIGHT AND BLOSSOM OVER THE AREA DURING THE OVERNIGHT HOURS THROUGH LATE TUESDAY MORNING. A PERIOD OF VERY HEAVY SNOW IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR DURING THE TUESDAY MORNING COMMUTE WITH SNOWFALL RATES OF 1 TO 2 INCHES PER HOUR. THE STRONGEST WINDS ARE THEN TO DEVELOP LATE TUESDAY MORNING INTO THE EVENING.
* STORM TOTAL SNOW...ACCUMULATIONS OF 8 TO 12 INCHES

For the countervailing point of view, the Washington Post’s Robert Costa seeks out former longtime Des Moines Register reporter David Yepsen, who thinks “Republicans are going to have a good turnout”:

Just catching up? Here’s a liveblog of everything that happened on the final day of the Iowa campaign:

Welcome to Iowa. Tonight is going to be terribly exciting, by which I mean tonight is going to be no good at all at being exciting. American politics are like American football — three hours of broadcast, and only 11 minutes of action. Even the announcers are the same: former stars who took too many blows to the head.

I was tempted to say, “Let’s start this journey together!” before I realized that metaphor is no good. Tonight isn’t so much a journey as it is a plane flight.

You wait weeks for the day to arrive and then drive to the airport only to wait to check in. Then you wait to go through security. Then you wait to board, and then (finally!) you’re on board. It’s happening! And now you get to wait to leave the gate, only to wait to take off on the runway and then wait to get there. And now you’re there! At your layover.

We’ve taken months to get to Iowa, gone through tremendous expense and effort, and we’re still nowhere near the end. For all intents and purposes, we’re all wandering around Atlanta’s Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport looking for a place to plug in our iPhones for the next few hours before the next leg.

My fellow Americans, CNN ran a countdown clock today. I watched it tick down for four hours to the ... you know what? I don’t even remember now, because there’s another countdown clock ticking down to when the caucuses begin. I think the original countdown was to their opening. ONLY THREE MORE HOURS TO INCREDIBLE DOORBUSTER SAVINGS ON MARTIN O’MALLEY.

And here’s the thing: even when everything is done tonight, we’re still just finished with day one. There’s a long way to go after this. Thank God CNN has all those clocks, because they’re going to need them.

Hello! and welcome to our wire-to-wire coverage of Iowa caucus night, as the US begins to choose the next leader of the free world.

In just a couple hours (it’s going to be a long night – but not too long), Iowans will start to show up at caucus sites to begin to pick the 2016 presidential nominees. In past elections, both the Republican and Democratic races have come into radical focus after the first vote in Iowa and the ensuing New Hampshire primary, which happens in just over a week.

The Iowa process is a little weird – if pretty thrilling – so here’s a quick breakdown before you see a bunch of people running across a room:

Big questions tonight:

Will Donald Trump, a candidate once written off as a non-starter, end up winning the first state in the Republican nominating contest? The smart polls look good for him.

Will Hillary Clinton strike gold in Iowa, eight years after falling short to the upstart Illinois senator named Barack Obama? Or will she succumb once again to a populist cascade, this time behind Vermont senator Bernie Sanders?

The caucuses officially open at 7pm local time (8pm ET); barring reporting issues, a clear idea of the results should emerge by around 9.30pm local time.

Between now and then, we have lots of reportage, data and commentary in store for you, including a look at key Iowa counties in a state that contains multitudes. Or, if you need to begin with an even wider angle – behold, Iowa:

Guardian journalists deployed in Iowa throughout the evening include Ben Jacobs, who is partying with Texas senator Ted Cruz; Sabrina Siddiqui, who will report from Hillary Clinton’s nightcap event; Gary Younge, who will take us inside a caucus event; Paul Lewis, who will skip from a caucus site to Donald Trump’s planned celebration; Dan Roberts, who’s tracking Bernie Sanders; and David Taylor, roving linebacker.

At the ready we’ve also got Guardian opinionators extraordinaire Megan Carpentier, Lucia Graves and Richard Wolffe, who’s with Jeb Bush in New Hampshire.

My blogging colleagues Scott Bixby and Adam Gabbatt will be stopping by as well, watching Fox News Channel so you don’t have to.

Who will win the night? Cast your vote in the comments! And as always thank you for playing along.