Category Archives: Iowa

Iowa caucuses: results in chaos as Democratic party blames delays on ‘inconsistencies’ – as it happened

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  • Party says they are using photos and paper trail to validate results
  • Biden’s campaign sends letter to party demanding ‘full explanation’
  • Iowa caucuses results – live updates
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That’s it from me after a very anti-climatic night in Des Moines. The Democratic presidential candidates and the media circus accompanying them are leaving Iowa with no sense of who won the first voting state in the nominating contest.

Here’s where things stand:

One reporter described Iowa Democratic party chairman Troy Price’s voice on the press call as “deflated”, which is understandable considering the organization saw its worst nightmare unfold before its eyes tonight.

"Thank you and we will be in touch soon," Price said.

An understatement to say he sounded deflated. Since his election in 2017, it's been his sole mission to try to make a fairer, more transparent Iowa caucus that would also run seamlessly. Tonight was IDP's worst nightmare.

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Trump campaign jubilant as Democrats’ big night implodes

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Vote-counting chaos in Iowa has been a PR disaster for Democrats

They couldn’t organise a caucus in a brewery. Or a church, or a library, or a school gymnasium. Democrats’ heroic charge to end Donald Trump in the final battle for decency and democracy has spiralled into vote-counting carnage and chaos.

Imagine if the shoe has been on the other foot. Imagine if Trump’s White House had spent four years preparing for an election only to mess it up. It would have been seen, quite rightly, as yet another example of his incompetence, ineptitude and inability to focus on detail or retain experienced staff.

Related: Iowa caucuses off to disastrous start as results delayed due to 'inconsistencies'

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The botched Iowa caucuses have become the ultimate political metaphor

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Monday’s voting revealed the Democrats apparently can’t count – not the most promising sign for the 2020 election

Iowa is like soccer. It is the most important of all the least important things in politics.

It may be the first state in the nation to vote in an election that will ultimately decide whether a sociopathic cretin keeps his finger on the nuclear button.

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Iowa caucuses off to disastrous start as results delayed due to ‘inconsistencies’

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Hours after voting began there were no results as the state’s Democratic party said it was ‘simply a reporting issue’

The Democratic presidential primary contest got off to a disastrous start on Monday after results from the highly anticipated Iowa Democratic caucuses were dramatically delayed due to “inconsistencies” in the reporting of the data.

The state’s Democratic party said it was performing “quality control” on the numbers “out of an abundance of caution” following reports of problems with a phone app used to relay vote tallies.

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How do the Iowa caucuses work? Your guide to the night

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The midwestern state is the first to vote in the presidential primary race. So what are caucuses, and how do they work? Here’s your guide to the night

The Iowa caucuses take place on Monday 3 February, kicking off the long process of nominating a Democratic presidential candidate who will eventually take on Donald Trump in November’s US election.

The primary race is made up of a series of contests called primaries and caucuses that take place in all 50 states plus Washington DC and outlying territories, by which the parties select their presidential nominee from the candidates who are running.

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‘You basically are nothing’: the Americans shut out of the Iowa caucuses

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Hundreds of thousands of Iowans are barred from the Iowa caucus because of physical and legal barriers

As Democratic candidates began a last minute blitz across Iowa on Friday evening, nearly a dozen men gathered in a cavernous YMCA meeting room in downtown Des Moines to have a conversation that felt a universe removed from the 2020 race.

They were part of one of the largest groups shut out of Monday’s caucus: people with felony convictions. Iowans are barred from voting for life once they commit a felony, and people can’t vote even if they committed a crime decades ago. The state’s policy, one of the strictest in the country, means more than 42,000 Iowans out of prison won’t have a say in choosing a presidential candidate. Almost 10% of the black voting age population can’t vote because of a felony conviction.

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‘We must defeat Trump’: Democrats make final appeals as Iowa prepares to vote

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Polling shows no clear frontrunner in tight race as four Democratic candidates are knotted together at the top

After more than a year of ideological clashes and policy debates, voters in the midwestern state of Iowa are set to have their say on which Democratic presidential candidate they believe is best positioned to defeat Donald Trump in November’s election.

Related: 'Nerve-racking': Iowans under pressure on eve of crucial caucuses

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Evangelicals see Trump as a way to get what they want after decades of defeat

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Trump has handed his ultra-loyal evangelical base policy victories and in return they turn a blind eye to his scandals

Joanne Craig, a lifelong evangelical Republican and resident of Sioux City, Iowa, couldn’t be more satisfied with the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Donning a large, blue “Christians for Trump” button on a blue pantsuit, the 80-year-old Craig emerged from the Country Celebrations Event Center in this small Iowa city satisfied to have heard Mike Pence and a cadre of Baptist pastors coo about the president’s policy victories.

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Warren falls behind in Iowa but wins coveted newspaper endorsement

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  • Des Moines Register: Warren is ‘the president this nation needs’
  • Sanders emerges as frontrunner in Iowa and New Hampshire


Bernie Sanders emerged as the frontrunner in the two earliest Democratic 2020 nomination voting states this weekend, Iowa and New Hampshire, according to the latest polls – but Elizabeth Warren received a powerful boost with an endorsement from the Des Moines Register newspaper in what is still considered an open race.

Warren had been slipping behind in Iowa, which holds the first vote in the nation with its caucuses just a week a way on 3 February, but the Register this weekend named her “the president this nation needs”.

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‘I really hope she is the future’: AOC’s support of Sanders fuels 2024 speculation

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s aid of Bernie Sanders’ campaign is raising talk of the possibility she might run for the White House herself

It was billed as a rally for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. But the only aging white man on the platform was the film-maker Michael Moore, and attendee Brittany Springmeier wasn’t there to see him.

She was in Iowa City for real star of the show, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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Iowa’s minority voters to Democrats: reject Trump and tell our story of hope

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Marshalltown has been transformed by migrants – and locals want candidates to make the positive case for immigration

Customers entering Zamora Fresh Market are greeted by Spanish-language music and the colorful sight of papel picado hanging from the ceiling of a small dine-in section. Employees chat in Spanish to each other and people buying tortas, lengua de res and containers of arroz y frijoles.

Related: Trump has savaged the environment. The planet cannot afford a second term | Ross Barkan

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Klobuchar gains momentum in Iowa – but will her gruelling tour be enough?

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The Minnesota senator is reaching out to Iowa’s smallest towns and rural settlements ahead of the vital February caucus and seeing increasing numbers

Craig Hiller, an Iowa farmer, had just enjoyed a hot chocolate on Amy Klobuchar’s campaign bus as it made a stop in the small town of Rockwell City, population just 2,100.

Hiller, whose state is the vital first one to cast ballots in the party’s nomination race to pick an opponent to Donald Trump, was impressed by the Minnesota senator, a fellow midwesterner who desperately needs a strong showing in Iowa to boost her 2020 presidential campaign.

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‘You’re a damn liar’: Biden lashes out at voter and seems to call him fat

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2020 contender appeared to say ‘look, fat’ after 84-year-old man questioned his age and his son Hunter’s business activities

A voter at a campaign event in Iowa got into a spat with Joe Biden on Thursday in an exchange that had the Democratic 2020 hopeful slamming the man as a “damn liar” and seeming to call him “fat”, which had conservatives leaping up to attack the candidate.

The man in the audience took the microphone and described himself as an 84-year-old retired farmer, then argued that Biden is too old to be president and pressed him on his son’s business activities in Ukraine, saying the former vice-president had “sent” Hunter to the country to work with an energy company.

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‘I’ll probably vote for him again’: will disappointed voters give Trump a repeat Iowa win?

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In the latest instalment of our series on the counties in which voters swung from Obama to Trump, Chris McGreal reports from Howard county, Iowa, where Trump voters have plenty to dislike – but many would vote for him again

Donald Trump hasn’t made life easier for Aaron Schatz. He may even have made the Iowa dairy and grain farmer a little poorer. But Schatz can live with that, for now.

“This trade war with China, it’s dropped prices of our corn and beans but it’s something that needed to be done because China was unfair to us. I know we’re going to take a hit. Some of us are getting a little frustrated but we’re happy something’s being done,” he said.

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Iowa teens delighted as Greta Thunberg leads unexpected climate strike

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More than 3,000 people gathered in the shadow of the University of Iowa on Friday afternoon to hear Thunberg speak

Three days prior to Greta Thunberg’s surprise visit to Iowa City on Friday, the organizer and local climate activist, Massimo Biggers, a 14-year-old Iowa City high school student, was preparing to strike – as he has done every Friday, sometimes on his own, since the Global Climate Strike day Thunberg inspired on 15 March.

Out of the blue, a message arrived from the Swedish teen activist, with whom he had been in touch, asking him if he was planning to strike again this Friday. “Of course!” he replied, and for the last 48 hours, according to his father, Jeff, neither had slept. “This was truly a miracle to have the town pull this together,” he said.

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‘I love the theatrics’: meet the tourists traveling to see the 2020 election unfold

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Some vacationers ‘too depressed by UK politics’ are heading to Iowa, the state with an outsized importance in the nominee process, to witness the primary elections

For many people, a vacation to the US means heading up New York’s Empire State Building, descending into the Grand Canyon in Arizona or splashing about in the Pacific Ocean in California.

Some, however, are choosing to whet their appetites differently, by instead traveling to Iowa, in the middle of the US, to witness the presidential primary elections in person.

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Republican party condemns Steve King – but where’s the outrage over Trump?

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Critics say the effort to dump King glosses over Trump’s conduct and fails to tackle a problem more pervasive than the GOP admits

Republican leaders piled on quickly following the latest outrageous remarks by Steve King, the longtime Iowa congressman and perceived bigot whom the party has been trying, unsuccessfully, to shake off its pant leg for months.

On Wednesday, King offered a defense of sorts of rape and incest, questioning whether, without the historical persistence of those two crimes, “would there be any population of the world left?”

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Republican Steve King: if not for incest and rape ‘would there be any population left?’

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  • Trump ally tries to defend absolute abortion restrictions
  • Democratic 2020 contenders call for King’s resignation

Republican congressman Steve King has tried to defend a proposal for absolutist abortion restrictions on Wednesday by saying that without rape and incest the human race might long since have disappeared.

Related: Fury as Trump ally says poem on Statue of Liberty refers to 'people from Europe'

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Biden in his element in Iowa – is he still the Democrat most likely to beat Trump?

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The former vice-president’s folksy charm went down well at the state fair – but critics say the party needs a bolder 2020 candidate

Joe Biden hardly seemed to be sweating.

He was standing on a small wooden stage at the Iowa state fair, a large crowd around him, no shade in sight. He wore a dark polo and his signature aviator sunglasses, and spoke with a vigor that was absent in his first two Democratic debate performances. But while his audience perspired in the oppressive August sun, cooling themselves with paper fans, Biden seemed at ease.

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Iowa executive was not sacked for loving Tupac Shakur, says governor

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Kim Reynolds says a ‘number of factors’ were behind the dismissal of state human services chief Jerry Foxhoven

The governor of Iowa has denied firing a senior executive because he sent emails to staff praising Tupac Shakur and exhorting them to listen to the late rapper’s lyrics.

Kim Reynolds’s decision to sack Jerry Foxhoven after he sent the email to more than 4,000 staff in June set off an explosion of national and interntional interest in Iowa’s usually unremarkable state administration.

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