Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders emerged victorious — and virtually tied — out of the nation’s first Democratic presidential nominating contest in Iowa on Monday.

Probably, maybe.

A coding error in an app used by precinct chairs to report results to the Iowa Democratic Party delayed the release of the final outcome of the caucus until Thursday evening. Even then, no official winner has been declared amid reports of irregularities and a pending review of results.

The Iowa caucuses are known for establishing a narrative. Whoever wins the Hawkeye State gets a bump going into New Hampshire’s primary, which then offers a bump going into Nevada. Momentum in the four early states, rounded out by South Carolina, collectively sets the tone going into Super Tuesday, when many states hold their nominating contests.

But that narrative was muddled coming out of Monday night’s caucus.

Buttigieg was quick to declare victory on Caucus Night, despite the fact that zero percent of precincts had reported. “Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality,” he told supporters in Des Moines. After it appeared that he had eked out a narrow delegate victory over Sanders, the former South Bend mayor became a prime target at Friday night’s debate where he was criticized for his inexperience.

Sanders was only slightly more cautious Monday night.

“Let me begin by stating that I imagine, have a strong feeling, that at some point the results will be announced, and when those results are announced I have a good feeling we’re going to be doing very very well here in Iowa,” Sanders said at his Caucus Night party at the Holiday Inn near the Des Moines Airport.

The full but still unofficial results show Buttigieg managed to snag 26.2 percent support in the state to Sanders’ 26.1 percent, expected to nab Buttigieg one more pledged delegate to the national convention than Sanders. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren came out of Iowa with 18 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden with 15.8 percent and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar with 12.3 percent.

But momentum also has a lot to do with expectations. Sanders was the favorite going into the Iowa caucus. Buttigieg had been doing well in Iowa but had slipped in the polls early this year. And that difference between expectation and reality has significant implications for how Iowa does or does not significantly change the course of the campaign heading into New Hampshire and Nevada.

Take the Sanders campaign, for instance. The organization started staffing up in Nevada in the spring, determined to build a substantial operation that could harness the grassroots energy the Vermont senator sparked during his presidential campaign in 2016. By the beginning of this year, he had more than 100 staffers in the Silver State — nearly double the size of the teams of all the other top polling candidates — and, as of Friday, that number has grown to more than 150, according to his campaign.

For the campaign, Iowa was, of course, good news, but it hasn’t substantially changed its plans. The campaign has, in the last year, established a robust phone and text program, and is in the process of following up with supporters it has identified and continuing to recruit new ones. And Sanders has been polling at the front of the pack in Nevada, just behind Biden.

“I think our strategy was validated in Iowa. We’re sticking with that and going to go through to the end here,” said Sarah Michelsen, state director for the Sanders campaign. “It’s execution here. All the plans are laid, it’s just keeping everything running.”

It has, however, contributed to a surge of volunteers signing up with the campaign. Michelsen said that the campaign has more than 3,000 volunteers in Nevada signed up for the caucus, with “a lot of those” from the last week. But she doesn’t attribute those new volunteers so much to new enthusiasm for Sanders as much as to concern about the caucus process in Iowa.

“People saw what happened in Iowa and that it wasn’t ideal and want to make sure that we’re ready for it here,” Michelsen said. “I think it’s a really positive way to react. That’s what the senator has said since 2015. If you want to change things, you have to get involved.”

They’re also making preparations for the first-ever early voting period ahead of the caucus, including renting cars to drive people to the polls in rural Nevada. For instance, one car will start in Twin Falls, Idaho, pick up voters in Jackpot and Wells, and take them to an early voting site in Elko before reversing the route and ending up back in Twin Falls that night.

“In many of these counties, the early voting site is only open one day,” Michelsen said. “We want to make sure that people are able to take advantage of it.”

For Buttigieg, who wasn't expected to perform quite as well as Sanders in Iowa, the last few days have been about taking advantage of the new momentum. For people who liked the former South Bend mayor but weren’t sure whether he had any staying power in the race, Iowa has given them their answer.

“I think first off Pete’s performance in Iowa can be seen as nothing less than victorious,” said Paul Selberg, Buttigieg's state director. “From being a virtual unknown on the national stage with little resources behind him, he was able to mobilize a broad coalition from all geographies, political parties, proving he is best positioned to beat Donald Trump.”

Buttigieg was late out of the gate in Nevada, only beginning to hire a team in June. It took him awhile to catch on as a candidate and, by extension, secure the financial resources needed to invest in the third early nominating state. But he has. As of January, he had 55 staffers on the ground, making his team the second largest only behind Sanders, and 12 offices across the state, more than any other campaign has, including in little-reached corners such as Pahrump and Fallon.

“Caucuses take infrastructure in order to be successful, so we heavily invested in our organizing team to make sure we are setting up that infrastructure on the ground to capture the energy and enthusiasm coming to our state,” Selberg said.

And now, coming out of Iowa, Buttigieg has an operation designed to capture the wind in its sails. The only question now is how far it will propel him. Until this point, Buttigieg has stagnated in the polls in Nevada, coming in at fifth on average. But campaign officials say that they are seeing increased enthusiasm behind the mayor, including, for instance, recruiting 100 Nevadans to be precinct captains for Buttigieg in just the two days after the Iowa caucus.

It’s also unclear how a young, white mayor from a midwest state will fare in the most diverse early nominating state, with a population that is 29 percent Latino, 10 percent black and 10 percent Asian American and Pacific Islander. He did, technically, come in second in Iowa among nonwhite voters, according to an ABC News entrance poll, but lagged behind Sanders with that demographic by nearly 30 percentage points.

His team, however, points to the diverse organizing team it has built in Nevada, which staffers say is majority people of color, with 40 percent who speak Spanish and a third who identify as Hispanic or Latino.

“Pete has shown that he can put together a broad coalition to beat Donald Trump and it’s up to our team on the ground to make sure that’s being conveyed,” Selberg said.

And they’re also hoping that Buttigieg’s appeal to swing voters is a major selling point. According to the campaign, Buttigieg won 21 out of 31 counties that voted twice for Barack Obama before flipping to support Donald Trump in 2016, and they have also recruited more than 100 nonpartisans and Republicans to be precinct captains for Buttigieg.

They also have a secret weapon, their national caucus director Travis Brock, the former executive director of the Nevada State Democratic Party and former political director of the Iowa Democratic Party who is hitting the road in Nevada to hold a series of precinct captain trainings across the state.

“It’s really to his credit to how we were able to win in Iowa and how we can win here,” Selberg said.

But not all campaigns are celebrating the Iowa outcome. After significantly underperforming in Iowa, a win in Nevada is all the more critical for Team Biden — though the Silver State has always been important to win for the former vice president, who has been polling significantly ahead of his opponents here for much of the race. Polls also show that he is well-liked by voters of color here.

“The calculus doesn’t really change. When the vice president announced in April, Nevada was going to be an important early state for him. Every time he’s come through the state we’ve been very upfront and frank about the fact that Nevada is an important early state for this campaign, and that’s going to be true regardless what happens in New Hampshire,” Biden spokesman Vedant Patel said. “This is the first state in the nominating contest that is reflective of the demographics we see across the country,”

The former vice president has a sizable team here in the state, comparable to that of the other non-Sanders top-tier campaigns. He had about 50 staffers on the ground at the beginning of January and will have nearly 60 by the end of the week. The campaign has been focused on intentional community organizing, which means staff are dedicated specifically to boosting support within particular communities across the state, including the Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander and African American communities, in rural portions of the state and on college campuses.

“Since we’ve had staff on the ground in this state it’s been very very apparent and clear to us that we’ve needed to put a significant amount of time and resources in this,” Patel said.

Where he has excelled in Nevada is in endorsements, snagging significantly more and higher-profile endorsements than all of his opponents, including Rep. Dina Titus, former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, and former Gov. Bob Miller. State Sen. Yvanna Cancela, the former political director of the Culinary Union, also was an early Biden endorser and recently joined his campaign as a senior adviser.

“I feel confident that our campaign has done and continues to do the work to engage voters in a meaningful way that allows them to not only know Vice President Biden’s position but also has a strategic focus on making sure that people know about the caucus and about early voting,” Cancela said. “All of that together makes me feel really confident in our campaign.”

Then there’s Warren, who has largely gotten lost in the post-Iowa shuffle after coming in third in the state and largely meeting expectations. Her campaign, who didn’t make anyone available to talk about the results out of Iowa, landed earliest in the Silver State, in January, and was one of the biggest teams early on, though they were eventually eclipsed by the Sanders and Buttigieg teams.

Klobuchar, meanwhile, exceeded expectations in Iowa but was late to the game in Nevada, only beginning to staff up here at the end of November. The campaign is now in the process of redeploying staff from Iowa to Nevada, with the hope of being building up an operation in less than two weeks that is prepared for Caucus Day.

There’s another candidate who isn’t expected to gain any national delegates out of Iowa but is now banking on Nevada — billionaire Tom Steyer. He’s run more than $10 million in ads in the Silver State, is turning out significant crowds to his rallies and is fourth in the polls. But the question remains is how a poor performance in Iowa might prove a setback in Nevada, though it did not deter several hundred people from showing up to a town hall with him at Robert O. Gibson Middle School in Las Vegas on Tuesday night.

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang also has a small team in the state, though he’s only been here four times. He outperformed Steyer in Iowa but also is not expected to receive any delegates to the national convention.

If past is prologue, what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire matters. But it’s Nevada that can cement or upend the narrative coming out of the first two nominating states

Four years ago, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton narrowly beat Sanders by 0.2 percentage points in Iowa, a far closer race than anyone expected when Sanders’ candidacy had started out as a long shot. His Iowa performance, coupled with a neighbor-state advantage, helped propel Sanders to a landslide victory in New Hampshire, where he bested Clinton by 22.5 percentage points.

Before Iowa, he was polling 23 percentage points behind Clinton in Nevada. After, it was 6 percentage points at most. He eventually lost the Silver State by only 5.3 percentage points, coming much closer than anyone had thought he would to Clinton. His early successes and near losses helped Sanders to go on to win a total of 23 nominating contests before dropping out of the race in June 2016.

Eight years earlier, Barack Obama emerged victorious from the Iowa caucus over Clinton, who had been the clear front-runner in the presidential race, and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, but it was Clinton who barely edged out Obama in New Hampshire after being projected to lose.

In Nevada, Clinton ended up winning the popular vote but Obama snagged more delegates to the national convention because of a complex formula that rewarded his statewide organizing. The two continued to fight their way through the presidential nominating contests until Clinton dropped out and Obama became the presumptive nominee in June.

Regardless who wins, Nevada offers the first glimpse at how presidential hopefuls fare among a Democratic electorate that’s more representative of the party has a whole than the ones found in Iowa and New Hampshire.

It’s a badge all are eager to claim come Caucus Day on Feb. 22.

