Bernie Sanders, who is the leading Democratic presidential candidate in the Granite State. “Sanders can overcome Secretary Clinton’s advantage”.
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The Iowa results – the closest in the history of the Iowa Democratic caucuses – were far tighter than Ms Clinton and her advisers had expected. Because of the way the process works in the Democratic Iowa caucuses, there is no mechanism for a recount.
This was a messaging shift for Trump on the poll: He had for months touted polls showing him ahead in Iowa, and criticised The Register’s survey as unreliable when it showed him behind.
Hours before the release of the official tally, Clinton’s campaign had already declared victory in a statement in which the team said that after thorough reporting and analysis, “there is no uncertainty” that Clinton had “clearly won the most national and state delegates”.
Iowa has held the country’s first presidential nominating contests since the early 1970s, giving it extra weight in the electoral process that can translate into momentum for winning candidates.
Her rival Bernie Sanders is claiming to have “astounded the world” by coming from nowhere and forcing Clinton into an nearly dead heat.
Ted Cruz won the Republican contest with 27.6% of the votes and 8 delegates, followed by Donald Trump (24.3% and 7) and Marco Rubio (23.1% and 7). That could favor candidates who don’t emphasize their religious calling, and perhaps helps those with appeal to younger voters.
Trump, though, has insisted that the uncertainty swirling around Cruz’s eligibility – largely stoked by Trump on the campaign trail – would make Republicans vulnerable should Cruz become the party’s nominee.
In a race for the soul of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton has worked to reassure liberals that she’s one of them, saying she is a “progressive who likes to get things done”. “I believe that now that we’re finally having debates, Anderson [Cooper], that we don’t have to be defined by the email scandal, and how long – what the FBI’s asking about”, he told CNN in an interview.
For the Democrats, it was former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
He has “absolutely” clocked Iowa as a victory, he said.
As Trump tells it, had he known in advance they could do so well in Iowa, “maybe I would’ve spent more time there”. The crowd went wild as they cheered his unofficial campaign slogan, “Feel the Bern”.
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Trump refused to concede any mistakes his campaign may have made in Iowa and insisted that New Hampshire – where Trump is doubling and tripling his closest competitors in the polls – would be a better fit to the campaign he has waged.
