Some Iowa caucus results ‘to be released by Democrats by 4pm’ after chaotic night

First vote of 2020 turns to farce amid inconsistencies with results

Democrats have said they plan to release most – but not all – of the delayed results of the Iowa caucuses by 4pm local time.

In an announcement that threatened to add more confusion to the vote in Iowa, officials from the Iowa Democratic Party said it hoped to make public 50 per cent of the results by 4pm local time (5pm EST).

“We are going to release the majority of results that we have by 4pm,” party chairman Troy Price told the presidential campaigns on a conference call on Monday morning.

He he said the party was “collecting paper records from more than 1,600 caucus sites “to make sure we have all of the documented information in place”.

He added: “We want to get some results out there.”

The announcement came after a night of chaos and embarrassment for Democrats, on what was supposed to have been a showcase for the party as it held its first vote in the 2020 cycle.

But as minutes stretched into hours on Monday night, and with no results in sight, candidates anxious to catch flights to New Hampshire and continue their presidential campaigns, spoke to supporters without knowing precisely how well they had done.

Several of them – including Bernie Sanders – claimed some sort of victory in the contest, which is widely watched and usually gives the winning campaigns a boost as they head into New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

As it it, with just partial results being released, and with campaigns immediately involving their legal teams in the discussions with the state party, the likelihood exists that some supporters will not believe whatever details are now made public.

Already, social media is lit up with conspiracy theories about whether the delay was a post by the Democratic establishment to undermine Mr Sanders campaign. In 2016, hacked emails revealed the that several officials within the supposedly neutral Democratic National Committee, had been working against Mr Sanders, and in favour of Hillary Clinton.

As he left Iowa, Mr Sanders said he was “disappointed” by the problem and said it was important that officials figured out “what happened”.

In Nevada, which also holds caucus rather than a normal ballot, officials were quick to try and quell fears of a repeat of Monday night’s chaos when people vote on February 22. The party says it can “confidently say” that the problems Iowa Democrats experienced with reporting their caucus results Monday “will not happen in Nevada”.

Nevada Democratic party chair William McCurdy II said in a statement on Tuesday morning that Nevada would not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus.

The party had previously announced plans to use an app to tabulate results at caucuses, as Iowa did, along with a second app that would be pre-loaded onto tablets available for voters to use at caucus sites during four days of early voting.

Meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York who is sitting out the four early voting states, sought to capitalise on the woes of his rivals by stepping up his multi-million adverting campaign in battleground states.