Politically Intense at the Iowa Caucus

Vincent Kornacki, Reporting Journalist

Wednesday morning, the official results from the Iowa caucus were released. This preliminary election is extremely important because it is the first predictor of what the November elections could look like. In order to vote for a candidate, Iowa citizens over 18 simply gather in a corner assigned to that candidate. One person in attendance counts as one vote for that candidate. Unfortunately, this year’s caucus was racked with problems.

Firstly, the organizers of the caucus tried to utilize a new app to track the caucus votes. Very few people were trained to use the app, and even if they were, many people were unable to log into the app. Because of this, the results of the election were released “incomplete” and remained that way for over a day. Even now, the results are incomplete. So far, Pete Buttigieg has a narrow lead over Bernie Sanders (26.5% to 25.6%). Until the official results are released, no one can be absolutely certain of the Democratic winner. At the same time, Donald Trump has a massive lead over Bill Weld, the Republican candidate in second (97.1% to 1.3%).