Pete Buttigieg goes into the crucial weekend before the New Hampshire primary as the unlikely leading threat to his more experienced rivals.

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Buttigieg, 38, and Bernie Sanders, 78, on Friday morning remained neck-and-neck in the results from the disastrous Iowa caucuses, with still no formal winner declared from the vote on Monday, which turned into a debacle after a new data collection app malfunctioned.

Donald Trump left Washington for an event in North Carolina in ebullient mood after a week on the up. A day after what he called a “celebration” speech at the White House to mark his acquittal in the impeachment trial, he crowed: “The Democrat party has given up on counting votes in Iowa. Looks like it all got computer ‘fried’.”

He went on, in a tweet: “Nobody knows who the real winner is. Maybe it’s Sleepy Joe [his nickname for rival Joe Biden], but it’s not looking that way. They lost millions & millions of dollars, all for NOTHING. But I WON Iowa big!”

Buttigieg was nipping Sanders’s heels in the latest opinion poll in New Hampshire – a blow to Sanders, because he represents the nextdoor New England state of Vermont, where he has been a leftwing fixture for decades. Sanders had hoped to be a shoo-in for a strong win in the New Hampshire primary.

Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) (FACT) Of the eight candidates in the BOSTON GLOBE and EMERSON polls of New Hampshire from February 6-7, only *two* increased their standing poll-to-poll: Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren—who many would call the top moderate and top progressive option for New Hampshire voters. pic.twitter.com/RAJYHXVdLR

The Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University poll showed Sanders just in the lead in New Hampshire at 24%, with Buttigieg at 23%. Then a gap before the third-placed Elizabeth Warren, also a New England politician as the senator for Massachusetts but now in danger of stalling despite a solid performance in Iowa.

Meanwhile, Biden, the vice-president in Barack Obama’s administration, was only at 11%. He also came a disappointing fourth in the results as reported so far from the Iowa contest, telling a crowd of voters at a subsequent event in New Hampshire: “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We took a gut-punch in Iowa.”

Biden has been noticeably less active than other candidates crisscrossing a snowy New Hampshire in the run-up to the primary on Tuesday.

Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator, told the Washington Post: “From a Biden perspective … he’s got to have sharper elbows. History may write that the best thing that ever happened to Joe Biden was getting gut-punched in Iowa.”

The official result from Iowa was still too close to call, and pressure is building on the candidates to make a good showing in New Hampshire.

That didn’t stop Buttigieg from declaring victory in Iowa, on Twitter as he prepared to take the stage for a CNN event. “The first time I was here, few people knew me or how to pronounce my name. Now we’ve won the Iowa caucuses and we’re just five days away from the New Hampshire Primary,” he wrote.

His campaign was hyperactive in Iowa: he has visited the majority of counties that swung from Obama to Trump, taking advantage of the sitting senators who are running – Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Sanders and long-shot Michael Bennet – having to be in Washington over much of the last two weeks for the impeachment trial.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bernie Sanders at St Anselm College, Manchester, on Friday. Sanders leads by a point in the latest poll. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

“We needed a new path forward, a path that welcomed people instead of pushing them away, brought them together instead of driving them apart, because this is our best and maybe our last shot,” Buttigieg told anxious but optimistic supporters during the limbo after caucusing on Monday in Des Moines, while the results were delayed.

The results come in a contest marred by fresh revelations about technical issues and reporting delays that have led to allegations of inaccuracy.

Sanders, calling the caucus “a screw-up”, condemned the Iowa Democratic party.

“I think what has happened with the Iowa Democratic party is an outrage – that they were that unprepared. That they put forth such a complicated process, relied on untested technology,” Sanders said.

Asked by reporters why people should believe his declaration of victory over Buttigieg’s, Sanders said: “Because I got 6,000 more votes.”

However, the “raw” popular vote is overridden by the allocation to each candidate of state delegates, which are based on a slightly different measure. State by state, that ultimately determines the party nominee to fight for the White House.

Wading into the growing chaos over Iowa, the Democratic National Committee chair, Tom Perez, called for a “recanvass” – essentially a review of the paperwork from each voting site.

At an event at his New Hampshire state campaign headquarters in Manchester on Thursday, Sanders said his campaign was ahead.



“Our campaign is winning the popular initial vote by some 6,000 popular votes,” he said.

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The deadlocked contest gives Buttigieg and Sanders a burst of momentum as they seek to pull away from the crowded field.

Buttigieg, a moderate, openly gay military veteran who has been out on the trail with his husband, Chasten; and Sanders, a longtime socialist and independent senator who has been campaigning with his wife, Jane; are separated by 40 years in age and conflicting ideology.

The leading candidates were set to duel publicly on stage at a high-stakes TV debate in New Hampshire on Friday night, in which Buttigieg and Sanders were expected to squabble over who has the lead, and Warren and Biden were under pressure not to slip out of the limelight and lose momentum.