But part of the holdup was due to missing results from as many as 90 precincts, which Democratic Party officials scrambled to gather through the night.
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“He is basically a modern JFK to Hillary Clinton’s Richard Nixon”, Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen said on “The Kelly File”. With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton and Sanders both won 21 delegates each.
The state party indicated in a separate statement that it was not ready to make a call.
The real estate mogul who has centered his campaign around being a “winner” tried to brush off the loss, saying he had been given no chance to win Iowa at the outset.
Cruz’s victory is likely due to a massive on-the-ground campaign effort conducted in Iowa over the past few months.
In what he described as a victory for the grassroots, conservative Texan lawmaker Cruz won with 28 per cent of the vote compared to 24 per cent for Trump.
Rubio may have come in third, but his farewell to Iowans sounded more like a victory speech.
New Hampshire’s primary is in eight days, and the general election is in nine months, so we are a long way from the finish line.
On the Republican side, turnout in Iowa shattered records as voters handed victory to Ted Cruz over Donald Trump. And we finished second. The lawmaker, who smiled broadly as he addressed supporters, is leading in New Hampshire, home to next week’s second contest, but trails Clinton in other states such as SC, which holds the third contest.
They said “don’t do it”.
Rubio beat fairly low expectations for him in Iowa, while the other three governors barely showed any life in the Hawkeye State.
Sanders said Iowans sent a clear message in their support of him.
Clinton said she was breathing a “big sigh of relief” after the results. The Huffington Post pollster puts Bernie Sanders significantly ahead of Clinton and Trump soundly ahead of Cruz, although those numbers are bound to change dramatically after Monday night’s showing.
“We can and we will get back to the founding principles that made America great”, tweeted Cruz (@tedcruz) with the hashtag #CaucusForCruz.
“And tonight, while the results are still not known, it looks like we are in a virtual tie”, said the 74-year-old Vermont senator. Sanders also trounced Clinton-74 percent to 22 percent-among voters who want a candidate “who cares for people like me”.
“We lost (the nonwhite vote), but that gap is growing slimmer and slimmer between the secretary and myself”.
The party denied that it had failed to staff its precincts ahead of time, but on Tuesday night it was asking the two campaigns to help track down the chairs that should have reported the missing results.
Another candidate, Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and a victor of the 2008 Republican caucus, also dropped out. Instead, the retired neurosurgeon, who was briefly the Iowa front-runner last fall, will go to Florida to rest and see his family.
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The next vote will take place in New Hampshire on February 9.
