The Iowa caucuses usually make the news for being the first step towards a presidential election, as well as being the first voting state and caucus in the nation.
Monday night marked a very extraordinary collapse in the Iowa Democratic party’s stability and structure as a whole. The caucusing was done without incident up until an app by Shadow Inc. was used to submit the results electronically to the Iowa Democratic Party. Then the Democrats were supposed to send the results to anxious news stations across the nation… the stations waited, and waited, and waited, and nothing came.
The first story broke of “quality control” being used as the hours ticked away. Seeing people’s nerves be tested in front of my own eyes, it became clear this was something much much bigger.
As it turns out, the entire application crashed, resulting in people using a backup method to call in to report the tallies.
However, the magnitude of calls combined with the amount of staff made some people wait for hours on hold with no response, while one reporter on air was shut out of a request for not responding immediately.
The totals are all there, just not reported, to this moment some places are still submitting tallies. While the Iowa caucuses are intricate and overly complex, there has never been a situation like this before, with calls of corruption, Russian interference, Tom Perez being called on to resign. This all leads to one common question asked by everyone – is this the end of the Iowa caucuses?
While some say the answer is an obvious yes, others dismiss the magnitude of this single irregularity. Oddly enough, the candidates on hold decided to all get up on stage, delivers speeches as if they won, and go on a plane for New Hampshire immediately after.
The entire situation is a mess, but the show must go on in the New Hampshire primaries, it’s anyone’s guess as to who won, but by studying trends and the polls we do know about from twitter and leaking members of the media, it is pretty feasible to say that Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg will garner first and second respectively, with Elizabeth Warren looking like a sure top 3 choice as well.
A surprise? Joe Biden, as his numbers were abysmal and it is looking more and more likely he will finish in fourth or fifth place, a punch in the gut for the candidate running solely on electability and beating the incumbent president, however with the current situation, it looks like the blow will be softened. It is worth noting that Sanders is leading in the polls in New Hampshire. However the outcome of this election presents itself, it is certainly off to a rocky start nonetheless.