First Iowa Caucus Results Put Pete Buttigieg in the Lead

Maybe the celebration speech last night wasn't premature?

Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg got a bit of attention and mockery Monday night when he went ahead and gave a massive victory speech while the Iowa caucuses were falling apart over technical problems and there were no actual results to report.

Now caucus vote outcomes are finally being reported after a day of anger and finger-pointing in Iowa over its many problems, and perhaps Buttigieg was not celebrating prematurely.

With 62 percent of Iowa precincts reporting, Buttigieg is currently in a narrow lead in total delegates, just ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), 26.9 percent to 25.1 percent. The two of them are followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) with 18.3 percent of the vote, and then former Vice President Joe Biden is in fourth with 15.6 percent of the delegates.

These are delegate counts. Sanders actually has a slight lead in total popular votes. Read the numbers here.

It is, of course, still way too premature to call either Sanders or Buttigieg the winner, but the big story that has already been coming out of Iowa is Biden's poor performance. And even Biden's poor performance has been playing second fiddle to the disaster that was the election app that had been put together to count the votes. Nevada's Democratic Party had also been planning to use the tool for their own caucuses on Feb. 22, but this afternoon announced they were abandoning it.