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Tom McCarthy (now) and Scott Bixby (earlier) in New York

New Hampshire: Trump and Sanders prepare for next 'step for revolution' – campaign live

Hillary Clinton won, but now it’s a ‘fight to the finish’

That’s it for another day on the campaign trail. You can catch up with every whisker of today’s action here. And if that’s still not enough, sign up for the Campaign Minute, our new daily email, below.

Thanks for reading.

The Donald Trump press conference simultaneously represents the best and the worst about American politics, writes Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs:

While Hillary Clinton, for example, hasn’t even gaggled with reporters this year, Trump makes himself comparatively accessible to the press and even gives unscripted answers to questions at times.

The problem is often the reporters. Trump has luxuriated in debating process not policy throughout the campaign, and reporters constantly offer him questions on the horserace.

There is nothing inherently wrong with asking about process. In fact, these are questions that politicians should answer and often dodge by putting on holier-than-thou airs. They claim they are serious people trying have a conversation about ideas with the American people. This is nonsense and it is a form of nonsense that Trump, to his credit, does not engage in.

Trump: Not in for nonsense.
Trump: Not in for nonsense. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

The problem is that reporters never press him about policy. Trump is a political neophyte with little policy expertise and often dismisses questions on policy with evasions “I can’t comment.”

There is a need to probe these issues further. Not to test Trump’s knowledge of terms and trivia, but his judgment. It’s not important that he know what “the nuclear triad” is, but whether he thinks it is necessary for the United States to spent large sums of money on bombers, submarines and missile silos equipped with nuclear warheads.

Part of this is the novelty of Trump. Many in the media still don’t treat him with the seriousness that he deserves and it makes better television for him to call Ted Cruz a Canadian than discuss whether the US should continue as a member of NAFTA. But Trump is a real candidate who needs to be treated as such, and the media’s fundamental role is to be an advocate for voters and ensure that the American electorate has all the necessary information to make an informed decision in the voting booth.

The press though has often failed on this count. The sad result is that while we know quite a bit about candidate Trump’s thinking, we still know far too little about what policies President Trump might implement.

Hillary Clinton is speaking in Hampton, New Hampshire, tonight, but she was just interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC.

Asked about whether Americans would ultimately respond to Bernie Sanders’s call on Monday night for a “revolution”, the Democratic frontrunner said:

Our founders knew if we were going to survive as the great democracy they were creating we would have to have a system that kept the passions at bay ... We couldn’t have idealogues hurling rhetoric back and forth. We had to have people who could produce results.

“Ideas that sound good on paper but can’t create results for people are just that,” she added. “I have a track record of producing results.”

Referring to Sanders’s supporters, Clinton said she was thrilled about young people getting involved “on the Democratic side”, but noted: “I do think we have an obligation to keep people focused on what is at stake ... We can’t let the Republicans rip away the progress we’ve made”, mentioning specifically Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and the prospect of a future GOP president attempting to “stack the supreme court”.

“We’ve got to get back to the middle, the big centre,” she said. “That’s how we make progress in America.”

Clinton said she was “thrilled” by winning in Iowa but appeared to play down expectations for the next Democratic contest by pointing out that New Hampshire, which borders Vermont, was “in Senator Sanders’s back yard”.

“New Hampshire votes for neighbours,” she said.

Updated

Kasich leads the polls in New Hampshire – if you only measure number of campaign events:

Bernie Sanders hailed his narrow loss in Iowa as “an important step forward in the fight for the political revolution” on Tuesday, as the Vermont senator’s campaign switched focus to New Hampshire ahead of the state’s February 9 primary. The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports from Claremont:

Speaking to a fired up crowd in Claremont, Sanders hailed the Iowa caucuses, where he lost to Hillary Clinton by just 0.29% of the vote, as a success.

“Last night in Iowa we took on the most powerful political organization in the country. Last night we came back from a 50 point deficit,” he told his audience at the Claremont Opera House.

The result showed that people “are prepared to stand up for fundamental changes in the way politics and economics are done in America,” Sanders continued, to cheers from the crowd.

Sanders leaving Keene, NH, earlier today.
Sanders leaving Keene, NH, earlier today. Photograph: Kristopher Radder/AP

About 400 people were at the rally, Sanders’ last event before Wednesday night’s town hall; an unofficial debate where he ail face-off with Clinton, who he leads by an average of 18 points in New Hampshire polls. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley dropped out of the Democratic race on Tuesday.

Sanders, wearing his regular outfit of dark suit and blue tie, sounded hoarse and occasionally sipped from a bottle of water as he addressed the crowd in his characteristically full-throated manner. But aside from the raspiness there was no sign of fatigue from the 74-year-old.

“The political revolution continues next Tuesday here in New Hampshire,” he told the crowd.

Many members of the audience appeared well-familiar with Sanders’ regular stump speech topics. His speech became an involuntary call-and-response at certain points.

“You know who the biggest recipient of welfare in the country is?” Sanders shouted, apparently rhetorically, after talking about income inequality in the US.

“Walmart!” the crowd shouted out in unison. It is one of Sanders’ common riffs at rallies – he says the company does not pay their workers a living wage, forcing them to turn to government benefits to make ends meet.

Sanders talked about offering universal healthcare to all. “One in five Americans can’t afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors write,” he said.

It prompted boos and some hisses from the audience. “We believe in you,” shouted one man in the crowd. There were cheers.

“More importantly, I believe in you,” Sanders replied. There were more cheers.

Sanders did not hang around for selfies after the speech, opting for some vigorous waving. No one seemed to mind.

Trump: 'I'm totally self-funding ...apart from small donations'

Trump is having a relatively subdued outing. He seems a bit winded?

Trump seems bored as he amounts an attack on Ted Cruz, the Texas senator:

He insulted Ben Carson by doing what he did to Ben Carson, that was a disgrace.

The Carson camp believes Cruz spread a rumor that Carson was suspending his campaign. Carson flew to Florida Monday night instead of to New Hampshire. He denies he is suspending his campaign.

Then a reporter presses Trump on whether he is really self-funding his campaign. He’s lent his campaign about $12.6m, according to the FEC, and accepted about $6.5m in individual donations.

Trump replies:

I’m totally self-funding my campaign, apart from small donations. It’s a small amount of money compared to what I’ve put in. People send checks for 10, 20, 30 dollars ... It’s very hard to send that money back.

“I always make a reference to that and I do that every time.”

No he doesn’t.

Updated

Trump: 'I think we'll get a lot of Sanders votes'

Trump is asked whether he thinks what happened in Iowa – his fall from atop the polls to runner-up in actual voting – might happen in New Hampshire.

“I had the highest number in history outside of [Cruz]” in terms of voters in the Iowa caucuses, Trump says.

He’s asked about competition in the primary. New Hampshire is an open primary and voters from either party can cast votes on either side.

“I think we’ll get a lot of Sanders votes,” Trump says. “They’re very into the trade world, and I’m the best on trade.”

Scott Brown, the former senator from Massachusetts and failed senate candidate from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, is introducing Donald Trump in New Hampshire.

In Portsmouth, NH, a couple weeks ago.
In Portsmouth, NH, a couple weeks ago. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

For the record, Brown has endorsed Trump for president.

Updated

Rubio is on the hustings in New Hampshire tonight, too:

Cruz, meanwhile, takes a jag down south:

Updated

Here’s a link to a live feed of the Sanders event. Running through his stump speech now.

Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post finds the needle in the haystack: a Jim Gilmore voter.

Gilmore, the former Virginia governor, is running for the Republican presidential nomination, technically at least. In advance of Monday’s caucuses he spent next to no time in Iowa, hired no staff and spent no money.

In the spin room after last week’s debate.
In the spin room after last week’s debate. Photograph: ddp USA/REX/Shutterstock

But he still won 12 votes statewide – and Bendery tracks one down:

One of them is Troy Bishop. He lives in Des Moines, and he’s anything but disheartened by Gilmore’s dismal showing at the polls. He said the former Virginia governor actually did better than he expected.

“He exceeded expectations,” Bishop said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “I mean, look at some of the other candidates. Look at the money they spent. They got 3,000 votes. He didn’t spend any money and got 12.

Gilmore’s lackluster Iowa performance was in spite of this inspiring boosterism:

(h/t: @bencjacobs)

Updated

Sanders is getting under way in Claremont, New Hampshire, where our Adam Gabbatt is reporting.

All eyes in the sleepy Polish town of Slopnice were fixed on the US presidential race Tuesday as Bernie Sanders, whose father was born there, was in a virtual tie with frontrunner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nomination, the AFP reports:

There’s quite a bit of excitement in the air here – we’re proud of Senator Sanders and we wish our ‘homeboy’ even greater success!” mayor Adam Soltys told AFP.

Soltys met Sanders and his brother in 2013 when they visited the picturesque town of 6,500 nestled in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains. They were retracing the footsteps of their father Eli, before he emigrated to the United States in 1921 at the age of 17.

“He even speaks a few words of Polish,” Soltys said, describing Sanders as “very sympathetic, warm-hearted and friendly”.

“Głosujcie na mnie!” [Google translate: Vote for me!]
“Głosujcie na mnie!” [Google translate: Vote for me!] Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

“After a couple hours, it felt like we were old friends,” Soltys said of the 74-year-old Vermont senator, described as being serious, sometimes even grumpy.

“We managed to find the house where Sanders’s father lived,” the mayor added.

Read the full piece here.

Clinton v Clinton: Iowa

Last night (or around 1pm today, depending on who was calling it), Hillary Clinton became the first woman in history to win the Iowa caucuses.

Flashback to 2008, when she was projected to win but came in third, behind victor Barack Obama and runner-up John Edwards. Clinton laid the ghosts of 2008 to rest Monday night, besting her previous outing by 19.43 points.

Now, given the length of her nominating battle with Obama eight years ago, and the new battle developing this time around, Clinton appears to be in the unique position of re-contesting dozens of states as a primary candidate.

That sets us up to make some interesting comparisons. The Guardian US interactive team has obliged with a series of graphics tracking Hillary Clinton v Hillary Clinton: how she did this time versus how she did last time.

Clinton v Clinton in Iowa

We’ll bring you new installments next Tuesday from New Hampshire, on the 20th from South Carolina, on the 23rd from Nevada ... and on and on, as long as the Democratic race stays competitive.

Right away we’ll have an interesting case in New Hampshire, which Clinton won in 2008 with 39.1% of the vote. She’s currently polling at an average of 37.7% in the state. Clinton is not expected to win this time – she trails Sanders by 18 points in polling averages, with just one week to go.

But will she beat her former outing? Stay tuned!

Updated

The Iowa runner-up heads east:

By 4.30pm ET there were 100 people lined up outside the Opera House in Claremont, New Hampshire, where Bernie Sanders wasn’t due until 6pm, writes roving Guardian reporter Adam Gabbatt:

Most had Bernie-branded signs, stickers or T-shirts. A number were also clutching menus for Ramunto’s Brick Oven Restaurant. A staff member was walking up and down the line in an opportunistic marketing push.

Brett Demack, a Claremont local, was right at the front of the line. He had refused a menu as he already had one at home. Demack had been waiting since 3pm.

“There was a little bit of disappointment,” he said of Iowa’s tight result. He was hopeful for Sanders’s New Hampshire result, though: “I think he’s going to win big.”

Melissa Warren had fashioned a sort-of Bernie Sanders totem pole.

She lived in Burlington, Vermont, when Sanders was mayor. “It was a hot mess,” she said, clarifying that she meant before Sanders was elected.

“He changed a lot.”

Warren recalled seeing Sanders in the city’s Battery Park, which she said “used to be a big mess”, picking up garbage with a litter picking tool.

“Everybody loves him,” Warren said.

Updated

The Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui is tracking Rubio in New Hampshire. She quotes him in a stream of tweets:

Rubio on Christie’s “bubble” comments [the New Jersey governor called Rubio “the boy in the bubble”]: “Chris has had a tough couple of days. He’s not doing very well, and he did very poorly in Iowa.”

“Sometimes when people run into adversity they don’t react well & they say things they maybe will later regret.”

Rubio tells CNN Jeb endorsed him in 2010 and thought he should be VP in 2012. “The only thing that has changed” is they’re both running.

The bigger problem, Rubio says, is from his stump: “The values they are trying to ram down our kids throats.”

Updated

Snapshot of what looks like an electrifying Jeb Bush event in New Hampshire, via the Bush camp:

Cruz picks up South Carolina endorsement

As the Republican race looks ahead to the South Carolina primary on 20 February – the Palmetto state goes third – the candidates are starting to roll out their local endorsements.

Florida senator Marco Rubio picked up a big one Tuesday in the junior US senator from the state, Tim Scott.

Now Ted Cruz has announced support from Representative Jeff Duncan, who has represented the state’s 3rd congressional district since 2011.

“When deciding who to support, I’m looking for a candidate who has a record that matches their rhetoric and a history of following through on their word,” Duncan said in a statement. “I believe that candidate is Senator Ted Cruz.”

Sanders tweaks Trump

Sanders goes after Donald Trump. He notes that Donald Trump believes that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

“That shocked me very much, because I would have thought that Trump thought it was a hoax pushed by the Mexicans,” says Sanders. “Or the Muslims. But the Chinese!”

It is laughable in some senses, but in others it is not.

Updated

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who came a hair’s breadth from winning Iowa, is working through his stump speech at a get-out-the-vote rally in Keene, New Hampshire.

You can watch the event live here on local WMUR. Sanders has a second such rally this evening in Claremont, New Hampshire.

You can also watch here:

Sanders is a marquee attraction this afternoon:

Updated

Not a bad state to win if you have to win a state.

Texas senator Ted Cruz has apologized to retired pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson an insinuation by certain members of his campaign that Carson was suspending his race for the White House

“When CNN reported and put up a post that Carson was not continuing on to New Hampshire and was not continuing on to South Carolina, but instead was flying home to Florida, our political team forwarded that story to our supporters,” Cruz told radio host Jeff Kuhner.

“The Carson campaign put out a statement, clarifying that he was not suspending his campaign, and the team did not forward that statement to the supporters as well. That was a mistake. It was mistake for us not to have forwarded the second statement as well. And I apologize to Ben for our not forwarding that second statement.”

Carson had criticized Cruz’s campaign for “lies and dirty tricks” implying that he had thrown in the towel. “My opponents resorted to political tricks by tweeting, texting and telling precinct captains that I had suspended my campaign – in some cases asking caucus goers to change their votes.”

Representative Steve King, a co-chair of Texas senator Cruz’s campaign, may have sparked that particular fire - at least, on Twitter.

A newly energized Hillary Clinton celebrated the results of Iowa’s Democratic caucuses and promised to “fight to the finish” in what has turned out to be a far more challenging nominating contest than expected.

Though confusion still lingered on Tuesday morning over the razor-close finish, Clinton praised her “win” as she turned her focus to New Hampshire, where she trails Vermont senator Bernie Sanders with the primary just one week away.

“I am so thrilled I’m coming to New Hampshire after winning Iowa,” Clinton said, taking the stage to raucous applause. “I can tell you, I’ve won there and I’ve lost there. It’s a lot better to win.”

Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event in Nashua.
Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event in Nashua. Photograph: Elise Amendola/AP

Speaking from a gymnasium at a community college in Nashua, New Hampshire, Clinton promised supporters that she would fight for better jobs, equal wages for women, racial justice and combating climate change. Behind her, the time on the scoreboard was set to 2016 and the home team had “45” points. (The president who succeeds Barack Obama will be the 45th person to take the oath of the highest office.)

Clinton reserved her fire on Republicans, not her Sanders, who after Martin O’Malley’s decision to leave last night remains her only challenger in the contest for the Democratic nomination. She did, however, draw distinctions with senator, especially on health care.

On Tuesday, she told supporters that she wants to build on President Obama’s Affordable Care Act whereas Sanders wants to “start over”. She also took a veiled swipe at his single-payer health care plan.

“I know young people think these are just details,” she said, after expanding on her health care policy. “That I should just fly at 30,000ft and just say ‘Ok, you know, we’re just going to do this and we’re going to do that. Thank you very much.’ but that’s not how I believe we should select the president. I want you to know what I’m going to do for you so that you can hold me accountable.”

Clinton and her campaign have suggested that many of Sanders’s proposals, especially his pledge to pass a single-payer healthcare plan, are pie-in-the-sky unrealistic and not practical. On Monday night, after Clinton’s campaign declared itself the winner she said forcefully: “I’m a progressive who gets things done.”

Clinton faces a strong challenge from Sanders in New Hampshire, where he holds an 18 point lead, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Clinton has seven days to close that gap. Clinton and Sanders will share meet on stage twice this week, on Wednesday at a forum hosted by CNN in Derry, New Hampshire, and then again on Thursday at a recently-scheduled debate in Durham, New Hampshire, hosted by MSNBC.

“I am looking so forward to engaging in the contest of ideas,” she said, referring earlier to Sanders as her “esteemed opponent”.

Clinton was introduced by her husband, Bill Clinton, and New Hampshire governor Maggie Hassan who called her “first woman ever to win the Iowa caucus”.

“New Hampshire,” Clinton shouted over the loud cheering, issuing a final call to arms from her voters here. “Stand up for me! Fight for me! And if we win, I will stand up and fight for you every single day.”

After finishing her remarks, Clinton lingered longer than usual after she spoke to shake hands and pose for selfies with supporters. Among those in the crush of people waiting to see her was Nancy Richards-Stower, a civil rights attorney in New Hampshire and a longtime supporter of the Clintons, waving a sign that read “our comeback kid”.

The sign was in reference to Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1992, when he pulled off a second-place finish after trailing in the polls. The result was viewed as a victory and earned him the nickname the “comeback”.

Richards-Stower said she believes Clinton is poised to make a “comeback” in New Hampshire.

“They said if voter turnout was high in Iowa, Bernie Sanders would win,” she said. “Voter turnout was high, and he didn’t win. If voter turnout is high in New Hampshire, she will win.”

“She’s off to such a good start,” said Bernadette Colley, a longtime Clinton supporter from Massachusetts.”

“I actually really agree with what Bernie Sanders has to say but he’s a Johnny one-wheel candidate,” He does not have the experience in race-relations or the policies that would advance underserved populations. He’s a little wishy-washy on gun control. He doesn’t have her ability to cut through the rhetoric and to work with the GOP. He just doesn’t have her background.”

Clinton will hold a second campaign event on Tuesday evening in Hampton, New Hampshire. There she will be joined by former US representative Gabby Giffords of Arizona and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly. Giffords survived an assassination attempt that left her with severe brain injury. She and her husband have become strong advocates for gun control.

Former Massachusetts senator and would-be New Hampshire senator Scott Brown, a moderate Republican who once graced the pages of Cosmopolitan, will endorse Donald Trump at rally on Tuesday night, one week before the state’s presidential primary, according to the Washington Post.

Brown will appear onstage with the real estate mogul/reality star/billionaire Republican semi-frontrunner at a rally in Milford, Hew Hampshire, barely 24 hours after Trump was handed an embarrassing second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

Trump’s commanding lead in the New Hampshire polls - combined with the demographic benefits of a less-religious Northeastern state - have already put the Granite State primary victory well within his reach. Whether the endorsement of a carpet-bagging senate candidate who lost his own race in New Hampshire two years ago will do much to boost the Donald’s campaign remains to be seen.

The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs files from New Hampshire:

The endorsement had long been expected - the only question was whether it would come before Iowa or after the caucuses. It serves to compliment the Iowa endorsement of Sarah Palin. While the former vice presidential nominee had long been beloved by conservatives with the Republican Party, Brown was considered a star among the GOP’s moderate wing after a shock win in a 2010 special election. While Brown was never known for his policy chops, he serves a well-liked figure in the Republican party who can serve as a validator for Trump among New Hampshire’s notoriously flinty, moderate electorate.

Updated

Big picture time: Despite every pundit’s fixation on the notion of momentum, there is a little thing called “delegate allocation” that these primaries are actually supposed to be about. It takes 2,382 delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president, and Iowa possesses only 44 for the taking.

Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin victory in the Iowa Democratic caucuses means she and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders are going to split up those delegates, Solomon-style: Clinton will collect 23 delegates and Sanders will win 21. With her advantage in superdelegates - party officials who can support the candidate of their choice, a feature exclusive to the Democrats - Clinton now has a total of 385 delegates, or a little more than 16% of the amount she needs. Sanders has 29.

Granted, delegate-chasing isn’t everything - Clinton tried that in her 2008 campaign against then-senator Barack Obama, and she ended up working for him.

Clinton beats Sanders in Iowa caucuses by 0.29 percentage points

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has beaten Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in Monday’s Democratic caucuses in Iowa, the Associated Press has confirmed.

The former first lady and US senator beat the self-described democratic socialist by a tiny margin - 49.86% to 49.57%, or 0.29 percentage points - in a nailbiting finish to the first election of the 2016 presidential campaign. The Clinton campaign had declared victory relatively early last night, but most news organizations at the time deemed the Democratic race too close to call.

Sanders is expected to win next week’s primary in New Hampshire, where he is 18 points ahead, according to Real Clear Politics. But his lack of support in the south and among non-white voters indicates that Clinton may have a solid wind at her back ahead of the South Carolina primaries and the Nevada caucuses.

Clinton’s victory was not have as triumphant as the once presumptive Democratic nominee might have hoped, the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui reports. Sanders, robbed her of a decisive win, and although Clinton said she had breathed “a big sigh of relief” Monday night in Iowa, she did not entirely lay to rest the ghosts of her 2008 campaign, when her perceived inevitability unraveled in dramatic fashion with a bruising third-place finish behind Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Sabrina looks back at the beginning of Clinton’s second presidential bid, when she hopped on a bus nicknamed “the Scooby Van” and hit the road to Iowa in what her campaign said was the first glimmer of a more spontaneous Clinton. Read more below:

Updated

The counting was still going on in Iowa when most of the 2016 presidential candidates landed in New Hampshire in the early hours of Tuesday morning, anxious to carry whatever momentum they could muster into the second state to pick party nominees in a week’s time.

Some did not survive the transition: Martin O’Malley on the Democratic side and Mike Huckabee for the Republicans are gone; Rick Santorum, the evangelical who pushed Mitt Romney closest in 2012, will surely be next.

But for the bulk of the trailing Republican pack with more establishment credentials, New Hampshire offers one last chance of redemption.

So what lessons are to be drawn from Iowa, looking into the New Hampshire contest?

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and the former Florida governor Jeb Bush barely registered in Iowa, but will be hoping for a third place next Tuesday to prove they have enduring appeal among more moderate voters. Anything less and they could be done.

The favoured Republican in the New Hampshire primary, according to pre-Iowa polling at least, remains the bombastic New York real estate magnate Donald Trump. But his aura of invincibility was badly tarnished by defeat on Monday at the hands of Texas conservative Ted Cruz, and no one knows what happens to a self-appointed winner when he is not winning.

Both will be eyeing one man more nervously still, however: the Florida senator Marco Rubio, whose surprisingly solid third place performance in Iowa brought him within a whisker of catching Trump.

The charismatic young Rubio is seen as perhaps the biggest threat to Democrats in November’s general election, but he needs a strong performance in New Hampshire to stop Cruz romping away when the battle turns again to more conservative “Super Tuesday” states on 1 March.

The Associated Press has released a statement regarding its lollygagging on declaring a winner in the Iowa Democratic caucuses:

Editors:

The Iowa Democratic caucuses remain too close to call with a difference of less than three-tenths of 1 percent with all but one precinct reporting. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has not conceded and the state Democratic Party has not responded to AP’s questions about whether they intend to do a recount of the caucus reports of candidate support.

The party’s delegate selection plan requires that the state party certify the results and report them to the Democratic National Committee within three days of that certification. But the plan does not spell out what such a certification would involve. The AP will continue to report on developments and will advise with any updates.

In case you thought his Iowa defeat might raise his game, Jeb Bush seemed determined to deliver another series of miscues and strange jokes in New Hampshire on Tuesday morning.

Bush was taking questions when a 19-year-old student at Franklin Pierce university stood up to say this was his first time voting for anything.

“Well that’s because you’re a first time voter,” Jeb explained helpfully.

The first-timer asked a question about Bush’s support for Israel, which turned out to be rock solid. Unlike Obama, whom Bush suggested was less than a man when it comes to his disagreements with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “You have to put your big boy pants on and be president,” he explained.

Just in case that foreign policy seminar didn’t do the trick, Bush ended his pitch to the young voter like this:

“I want to be your first,” he said, holding up his index finger, and grinning. “First vote.”

Meet Sticker Kid. The true winner of Monday night’s caucuses in Iowa.

While Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton gave a speech about her narrow near-win over competitor Bernie Sanders, she remained unaware of the teenager standing directly behind her, slowly stealing her thunder.

Peter Clinkscales, a student at Drake University who had stickers pressed to his face, bopped around and made various amusing facial expressions in direct view of the camera at Clinton’s sort-of Iowa victory party.

The college student can now check trending on Twitter off his bucket list as he was quickly labelled #Stickerkid or #Stickerboy and the “real winner” of the #IowaCaucus.

Clinkscales, whose Twitter profile says he is “a simple man” who likes “pretty, dark-haired women and breakfast food”, told Mashable he and a friend had initially planned to bring saxophones to the speech

“We thought it would be a great idea if we brought two saxophones here to the rally for Hillary Clinton so he could play one and he could play one,” he said. “It would be a cool mashup.”

But when he found out the instruments might not get past security, he made use of the materials he had on hand: stickers.

“I had stickers in my hand and I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be kooky if I put stickers on my face?’” he told the Independent Journal Review.

A spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says the campaign is “still assessing” whether to ask Iowa’s Democratic Party for a recount.

With just one precinct remaining uncounted after Monday’s caucuses, Clinton leads Sanders by less than three-tenths of 1 percent. The Iowa Democratic Party has declared the contest “the closest in Iowa Democratic caucus history.” Sanders has yet to concede the race to Clinton, despite the Clinton campaign’s declaration of victory last night.

Earlier today, the Sanders campaign had called on the Iowa Democratic party to release a raw vote count.

Supporters came to Nashua, New Hampshire from all over New England on Tuesday, to hear Hillary Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, speak at a community college hours after her virtual dead heat with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in Iowa.

Though the final result had not been finally determined, New Hampshire governor Maggie Hassan introduced Clinton as the “first woman ever to win the Iowa caucus”. The crowd, packed into a gymnasium, erupted in loud cheers.

A line snaked across the campus – minutes before the event it looked like many might not make the cut.

Before the event, I spoke with an exchange student from Indonesia who is studying political science at Boston University and who had come with a group of friends, to see the woman they think will be the first female president of the United States.

I also spoke to a couple Sanders supporters, who said they were buoyed by his strong showing in Iowa last night.

Via the Guardian US interactive team, here’s how the final results in Iowa are stacking up:

Live iowa caucus results — interactive

Ben Carson is accusing his fellow would-be Republican presidential nominees of attempting to deceive voters into thinking that he’s thrown in the towel.

“For months, my campaign has survived the lies and dirty tricks from my opponents who profess to detest the games of the political class, but in reality are masters of it,” Carson said in a statement released by his campaign in the wee hours of the caucuses. “Even tonight, my opponents resorted to political tricks by tweeting, texting and telling precinct captains that I had suspended my campaign – in some cases asking caucus goers to change their votes.”

“One of the reasons I got into this race was to stop these deceptive and destructive practices, and these reports have only further steeled my resolve to continue and fight for ‘We the People,’ and return control of the government back to them.”

Carson didn’t specify which campaign he was referring to, but representative Steve King, co-chair of Texas senator Ted Cruz’s campaign, was very active on social media at the time...

Carson had announced that he was returning to his home in Florida following a disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses to get “fresh clothes.”

Just before he left Iowa on his private jet, Donald Trump told supporters at what was supposed to be his victory party that he might return to buy a farm.

“We’re just so happy with the way everything’s worked out,” he said.

The sour look on the faces of his audience told a very different story.

Donald Trump and wife, Melania, watch the numbers roll in.
Donald Trump and wife, Melania, watch the numbers roll in. Photograph: Jae C. Hong/AP

Trump’s second-place finish to the conservative senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, was a humiliating setback.

The polls had been indicating the billionaire was on course to win Iowa, and there was a growing sense that if he could pull off a victory in such a rural, evangelical state, he could become unstoppable.

Even Trump had started to sound surprised about his immunity from defeat.

“It is, like, incredible,” he mused at one stop in Sioux City. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Instead, Trump, the candidate who seemed to be defying the laws of political gravity, has hit the ground with something of a bump. Cruz’s victory, securing 28% of the ballots to Trump’s 24%, was convincing. Florida senator Marco Rubio came in a close third, at 23%, raising the prospect of a formidable challenge from an establishment candidate.

“This was always going to be the hardest state for us to win,” a senior figure in the Trump campaign said late on Monday. “The fact is we’re still unbelievably strong everywhere else in the country.”

On paper, that much is true. Trump landed in New Hampshire in the early hours of Tuesday with a 20-point lead. He also enjoys substantial leads in South Carolina and Nevada, the next states in line, and is ahead in national polls. It is worth noting, of course, he led almost all the way in Iowa in similar polls.

Trump is still the Republican frontrunner. It is no longer far-fetched to consider a former host of the reality TV show The Apprentice occupying the White House.

But the nature of his defeat in Iowa raises difficult questions about whether his celebrity-fuelled appeal can translate into votes.

If you’re waking up to the news that Donald Trump lost to Ted Cruz in Iowa, you might be surprised – especially if you were closely following the polls that said he would defeat Cruz by almost six percentage points.

Donald Trump speaks at the Sheraton in West Des Moines, Iowa.
Donald Trump speaks at the Sheraton in West Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: John Taggart/EPA

That wasn’t the only upset on Monday night. It looks like Marco Rubio, who was expected to take about 17% of the 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.

That’s not the only factor that makes Iowa results hard to interpret. At national elections, vote share matters. In Democratic caucuses though, it’s state delegate equivalents (SDE) that count and those are calculated based on how many county delegates candidates manage to amass. That means that even if Iowa were demographically similar to the rest of the US (it’s not), results here wouldn’t necessarily be indicative of national sentiment. Confused? I’m not surprised, but this video should help.

In other words, caucuses are weird. But that doesn’t mean Monday night’s results are inconsequential. Winning here can dramatically shape a candidate’s public image – no wonder then that Clinton’s speech in Iowa sounded suspiciously like a winner’s acceptance despite the fact that at the time of delivering it, she was no such thing. And, after repeatedly quoting Walter Hagen’s words: “No one remembers who came in second”, Donald Trump might regret his Twitter stream as well as his overall “loser” election rhetoric strategy.

I’ve been told voters here like to say: “The people of Iowa pick corn - the people of New Hampshire pick presidents.”

We’ll see about that as the presidential candidates turn their sights from the cornfields of Iowa to the snowy mountains of New Hampshire on Tuesday.

Chris Christie answers questions at a town hall at Nashua Community College.
Chris Christie answers questions at a town hall at Nashua Community College. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

After a wild night that defied expectations and shook to the core the political establishments of both parties, several presidential candidates have already landed or are en route to the Granite State to kick off a week-long sprint to the primary on 9 February.

Here, the candidates face a far different electorate. The 2016 presidential hopefuls are courting a more moderate, less religious and more independent set of voters.

On the GOP side, those same polls that proved wrong in Iowa are showing real estate mogul Donald Trump with a significant lead over his Republican rivals. Trump has said he expects to pull off a victory here, a state that is much closer to his home state of New York. The second place spot is ripe for the taking, however, with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, fresh from a big night in Iowa, both vying for second place.

While the results rolled in in Iowa, former Florida governor Jeb Bush told a crowd of supporters of his flagging campaign in Manchester that “the reset has started as of tonight”.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie also spent Monday night in New Hampshire, as did Ohio governor John Kasich, who has been quietly campaigning here all week. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina tweeted last night that she was en route to New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson said he was headed home to Florida to get “some fresh clothes,” while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley will both also return home - but for them, without the pretense of refreshing their laundry.

On the Democratic side of things, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders arrived by charter plane in New Hampshire overnight after ending the night in a “virtual tie” with the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton that six months ago seemed impossible.

I am in place here at Nashua Community College where Clinton will take the stage in little over an hour alongside her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

I’ll check back in soon!

Updated

An Iowa caucus precinct captain ostensibly dedicated to Rick Santorum is blaming a defective pen for his not voting for the former Pennsylvania senator.

“You didn’t vote for him?” MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes asked the man, who was wearing a Santorum-branded sweater vest, after being shown that Santorum hadn’t garnered a single vote in the precinct.

“As I was writing down, my pen ran out of ink,” the man said. “I was like, I can’t just ask somebody for a new pen while I’m doing this.”

“Buddy, you’re the Santorum dude!” Hayes said.

“I know, I know,” the Santorum supporter responded with a blush and a shrug. “Failure to launch, failure to launch.”

Bernie Sanders’ path to the White House has been incredibly narrow but, after his near-draw in Iowa on Monday night, there’s clearly open road ahead of him.

On Tuesday, the race in which pundits long-ago declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive victor will begin in earnest; sit tight, it’s going to be a very long, bumpy ride.

The margin between Sanders and Clinton was razor thin all of Monday night – certainly thinner than anyone would have imagined possible last spring, when he was down by 42 points in a national poll. Coming in anywhere near close to Clinton in the Iowa caucus would’ve been a significant victory for Sanders; the near-tie showed the deep resonance of his message.

The actual results underscored what he and his supports have said all along: establishment Democrats have underestimated him and the power of his movement.

Hillary for America’s Iowa state director Matt Paul has released a following statement following what the campaign characterizes as “Hillary Clinton’s victory” in the Iowa caucuses:

Hillary Clinton has won the Iowa Caucus. After thorough reporting – and analysis – of results, there is no uncertainty and Secretary Clinton has clearly won the most national and state delegates. Statistically, there is no outstanding information that could change the results and no way that Senator Sanders can overcome Secretary Clinton’s advantage.”

That should be news to Bernie Sanders, who has called on the Democratic party to release a raw vote count in Iowa after the nail-biting finish left lingering doubts over who, exactly, won Iowa.

Bernie Sanders has called on the Democratic party to release a raw vote count in Iowa after a nail-biting finish left lingering doubts over the first, much tighter-than-expected, clash with Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane Sanders acknowledge supporters during a caucus night party.
Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane Sanders acknowledge supporters during a caucus night party. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Speaking to reporters on a chartered plane flying from Des Moines to their next showdown in New Hampshire, the leftwing senator said his performance in the Iowa caucus was a signal that the American people were hungry for more radical change than that offered by establishment candidates.

“Tonight is a wonderful start to the national campaign,” Sanders said in a packed gangway on the late-night flight heading east to beat an incoming snowstorm. “Tonight shows the American people that this is a campaign that can win.”

He threw little light on an unfolding controversy over certain Iowa precincts that did not have enough Democratic party volunteers to report delegate totals for each candidate but did call on officials to take the unusual step of revealing underlying voter totals. Delegates are awarded in the Iowa Democratic contest on a precinct-by-precinct basis, irrespective of the state-wide vote for each candidate.

“I honestly don’t know what happened. I know there are some precincts that have still not reported. I can only hope and expect that the count will be honest,” he said. “I have no idea. Did we win the popular vote? I don’t know, but as much information as possible should be made available.”

Sanders’ campaign director, Jeff Weaver, told reporters he did not “anticipate we are going to contest” specific results but hoped there would be an investigation into what happened.

He also claimed the tight result, in a state where Sanders had once trailed by Clinton in polling by 50 percentage points, was a sign of a dramatic surge of popularity for his agenda to reduce income inequality and “seize back democracy from the billionaire class”.

In a sign of how close the race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has been in Iowa, officials in some counties resorted to a coin toss.

According to an obscure Democratic party rule, a coin flip can be called upon if the result is a tie. The toss was used in a handful of precincts to decide how to award the number of delegates to the county convention.

This video posted on social media shows caucus functionaries tossing a coin to break a tie between Sanders and Clinton in West Davenport; it also reveals the “letting the coin land on the ground” technique was used.

In total, the Clinton camp won six out of six coin tosses.

Sam Lau, the Iowa Democratic party spokesman, noted that the coin tosses were used to determine county convention delegates, which make up only a fraction of the state delegates awarded to candidates. The coin tosses did not affect the overall result in the state.

David Schweingruber, an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University, explained to the Des Moines Register how a total of 484 eligible caucus attendees were initially recorded at Ames.

Yet when each candidate’s preference group was counted, Clinton had 240 supporters, Sanders had 179, and Martin O’Malley had five and was declared out.

Those figures added up to just 424 participants, leaving 60 apparently missing. The numbers were plugged into a formula that determines delegate allocations, with Clinton receiving four delegates and Sanders three – leaving one delegate unassigned.

A Democratic party hotline was called to advise on how to decide between Clinton and Sanders, and party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss. A Clinton supporter called “heads” on the quarter flipped in the air, winning her a fifth delegate.

According to some accounts, the historical origin of coin flipping is the interpretation of a chance outcome as the expression of divine will. The Romans knew this game of chance as navia aut caput, translated as “ship or head”, as some coins had a ship on one side and the head of the emperor on the other.

Cross and pile was a coin-flipping variant in medieval England: with the cross being the major design on one side of the coin, and the pile the mark created by the hammer used to strike the metal on the other side.

Now we refer to the two possible outcomes simply as heads and tails, as these represent opposite body parts.

Here’s a more granular look at what happened in the Democratic field last night - as much as we can figure it out, anyway. With less than a single percentage point separating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in overall delegate support, most news organizations are still calling the race too close to call.

Hillary Clinton with husband Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton in Ankeny, Iowa.
Hillary Clinton with husband Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton in Ankeny, Iowa. Photograph: IBL/REX/Shutterstock

Despite the drama of the Trump upset in the Republican side of the caucuses, the record-breakingly close finish between Clinton and Sanders may shape up to be the biggest story out of Iowa.

With more than 99% of the precinct results in, Clinton leads 49.9% to 49.6% over Sanders. Both candidates have now functionally declared victory - well, a “sigh of relief,” in Clinton’s case - despite being locked in a virtual tie.

Appearing onstage in Des Moines before the final tally arrived, Clinton hailed “a contest of ideas” and appeared battle-ready for the fight of her political life.

She congratulated her opponent, saying: “I am excited about really getting into the debate with Senator Sanders about the best way forward to fight for us in America.”

In his competing victory speech - because that’s really what it was - Sanders raised the roof as he told supporters: “While the results are still not known, it looks like we are in virtual tie,” adding: “The people ofIowa have sent a very profound message to the political establishment, the economic establishment, and by the way to the media establishment.”

Running in a distant - like, fraction-of-a-single-percentage-point distant - third was former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who suffered a devastating caucus after seeing just one attendee at his final 2015 event in the state.

“I decided that it would be an extreme poverty indeed if the Democratic party had only two candidates to chose from,” O’Malley said in his speech at a live music hall in Des Moines. “The only thing wrong with politics is not enough good people bother to try.”

After originally attempting to run as a mainstream alternative to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, O’Malley had trailed the former secretary of state and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders by considerable margins in state and national polls in recent months.

“Entering the race as an unknown, he always faced long odds - especially against a candidate as universally known as Secretary Clinton,” David Hamrick, O’Malley’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “While he suspended his campaign this evening, he plans to continue to play a forceful role in the Democratic Party and the national debate going forward.”

O’Malley’s low polling numbers were reflected in attendance at his campaign functions – in December, O’Malley put on a brave face after precisely one personshowed up to his final 2015 event in Iowa. (According to O’Malley, the voter left uncommitted.)

The New York Post may have come up with the darkest Trump-related pun in its long and sordid history with the real estate magnate:

Here’s a more granular look at what happened in the Republican field last night - we’ll get to the Democrats next, but there’s still information coming in on that side even as we type this.

Ted Cruz celebrates with supporters in Des Moines, Iowa.
Ted Cruz celebrates with supporters in Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Yin Bogu/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Texas senator Ted Cruz finally showed us what Donald Trump’s face looks like when he loses in a poll-defying victory over the real estate tycoon that his campaign hopes will give him stronger momentum in New Hampshire, where Trump’s lead in the first-in-the-nation primaries is much more commanding than it was in Iowa.

With 99.9% of votes in, Cruz held a 27.7% to 24.3% lead over Trump, with Rubio at 23.1%. None of the other Republican candidates broke into the double digits: Dr. Ben Carson went home to get new clothes after winning 9.3% of the delegates; Rand Paul won 4.5%; Jeb Bush, who spent a king’s ransom in Iowa, won only 2.8%; every other candidate won less than two percent of overall delegate support, prompting former Arkansas governor and one-time Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee to suspend his campaign.

In a (very, very lengthy) victory speech, Cruz declared his caucus win as a victory for “courageous conservatives” across the state and the country.

“Iowa has sent notice that the Republican nominee and the next president of the United States will not be chosen by the media, will not be chosen by the Washington establishment, will not be chosen by the lobbyists, but will be chosen by the most incredible powerful force where all sovereignty resides in our nation: by we the people, the American people,” Cruz said.

Cruz’s victory, declared relatively early in the night, led many to wonder what, exactly, a Trump concession speech even looked like. The candidate, famous for deriding losers, was now a loser.

The experience seemed to have been a humbling one for Trump, who congratulated Cruz in his concession 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 ... We’re just so happy with the way everything’s worked out.”

He praised Iowa and Iowans, adding what might be the biggest whopper dropped on the campaign trail this cycle:

Trump’s disappointment was compounded by how close he came to third place - senator Marco Rubio, who wasn’t expected to pull past the low teens, was only a little more than a percentage point away in the final delegate count, which may have accounted for what many called the third-place finisher’s victory speech.

“So this is the moment they said would never happen,” Rubio told a raucous crowd. “For months, they told us we had no chance.”

“They told me I needed to wait my turn. They told me we had no chance because my hair wasn’t gray enough and my boots were too high,” he said, referring to a flurry of shady campaign commentary about his Cuban heel boots. “But tonight, here in Iowa, the people of this great state have sent a very clear message after seven years of Barack Obama: we are not waiting any longer.”

Updated

What happened last night?

The record-shattering results of the Iowa caucuses are finally in, and as the presidential candidates who survived the night make their way to New Hampshire ahead of next week’s primaries, bleary-eyed politicos are still trying to make sense of a caucus that trounced expectations, entrance polls and common sense.

Two candidates have officially dropped out, another abandoned his campaign to go back home to “get fresh clothes”, and almost every pre-caucus poll has been proven wrong.

Here’s a quick catchup on where each of the major candidates stand after tonight – and what the caucus results mean for them:

  • Texas senator Ted Cruz won the night on the Republican side almost handily – with 99.9% of votes in, Cruz held a 27.7% to 24.3% lead over billionaire (former?) frontrunner Donald Trump, with fellow freshman senator Marco Rubio pulling in 23.1%, nearly double what the most accurate polls had predicted.
  • In the Democratic camp, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is locked in a virtual tie with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. The Associated Press and multiple outlets deemed the race “too close to call”, although results announced by the state Democratic party early Tuesday morning gave Clinton the win.
  • Clinton was awarded 699.57 state delegate equivalents, versus 695.49 for Sanders, the closest results in the history of Iowa’s Democratic caucuses.
  • Despite Clinton and Cruz’s (apparent) victories, the top-tier candidates of both campaigns will walk out of Iowa in a delegate tie – Iowa’s 44 Democratic delegates will be split evenly between Clinton and Sanders, and its 30 Republican delegates will be split roughly into thirds for Cruz, Trump and Rubio.
  • Both Clinton and Sanders gave what amounted to victory speeches last night – the Clinton campaign even declared victory, despite the hair’s breadth of the differential in their delegate count. “It looks like we are in a virtual tie,” said Sanders. “I stand here tonight, breathing a big sigh of relief,” said Clinton.
  • Two candidates suspended their campaigns following the caucuses: former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley on the Democratic side, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on the Republican side.

Updated

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