Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders lead in preliminary results out of the Iowa caucuses, which have been shrouded in controversy after an apparent app malfunction forced the Democratic Party in the state to hunker down and cut off access to the results on Monday.
Those two candidates — who have attracted 26.9 per cent and 25.1 per cent of the vote, respectively, with 62 per cent of precincts reported — are followed further behind by Elizabeth Warren in third place, who has attracted 18.3 per cent.
Should those results hold when all of the precincts are accounted for, then those three will be the clear victors out of the state, and the only three who won actual delegates out of the state. Mr Buttigieg and Mr Sanders have so-far both won 10 delegates and Ms Warren has four.
And it would likely mean that Iowa is long remembered as a major blow to the candidacy of former vice president Joe Biden, who has led in most national polls but received just 15.6 per cent of the vote in Iowa, according to those preliminary results. Amy Klobuchar, who has run a campaign in Iowa focused on her midwestern roots, received 12.6 per cent of votes, and is the only candidate behind those four to land in double digits.
The chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party released those results at 5 pm EST, after a hectic overnight count that officials said was necessary to ensure the integrity of the results.
That 62 per cent constitutes results from 1099 of 1765 precincts.
"We hit a stumbling block on the back end of this data, but we know this data is accurate," said Troy Price, the chairman.
The mishap in Iowa marked a startling break down at the very start of the Democratic primary season, and served to deny a clear win and the resulting momentum for candidates as they head to New Hampshire for its primary next week.
In New Hampshire, aggregates of polls show Mr Sanders leading the field by 8.6 points at 26.4 per cent, with Mr Biden in second at 17.8 per cent. Ms Warren comes in third there with 14.6 per cent, and Mr Buttigieg trails just behind her with 13 per cent.
