The system for reporting votes failed to function properly and back-up telephone hotlines jammed up, leading to no declaration of a winner

After months and months of relentless campaigning, numerous debates, endless rallies and intense field organizing the Iowa caucuses finally played out on Monday night and… nothing.

The system for reporting votes apparently failed to function properly and back-up telephone hotlines jammed up, leading to no declaration of a winner and the various campaigns all flying off to the next stop of New Hampshire with no one knowing the results.

Here is a quick guide to the chaos.

Smartphone app blamed for Iowa caucuses results delays Read more

What just happened?

The first state to vote for a Democratic candidate was Iowa, on Monday, and the party still hasn’t been able to announce the results.

Yikes. Why not?

Iowa uses a complicated and arcane system called a caucus. Basically voters gather in school halls, churches, libraries and other places and divide up into groups to show their support for each candidate. There are two rounds of voting and then the proportion of votes is converted into a number of delegates. The number of delegates nationwide eventually decides who will be the candidate.

The results should have been known overnight when local party chiefs sent their results back to the Iowa party.

Play Video 1:34 'Iowa, you have shocked the nation': Democrats remain hopeful despite results chaos – video

But this year a couple of changes had been made to the system which meant it basically collapsed.

For the first time, the two rounds of voting were set to be announced as well as the final delegate count.

And to help with this the party gave their local representatives a mobile app to use to report their results. Too many of them seem to have had trouble using the app, so some switched to the phone line, which became overwhelmed.

The Iowa Democratic party says there was a technical problem with the app, meaning that the results it was transmitting to the party from the local sites were wrong.

Why is Iowa so important?

Iowa has gone first in the Democratic race for nearly 50 years, and the winner gets an enviable media spotlight and much-needed momentum. Since 2000 every Democrat who has won Iowa went on to win the nomination. But the system is also criticised for giving disproportionate power to a tiny state that is 90% white and largely rural, and is unrepresentative of the Democratic party as a whole. This situation won’t help its case.

Do the Republicans have caucuses?

They do and Donald Trump won with 97.1% of the vote. The Republican race this year is expected to be a complete walkover for Trump – as it nearly always is for an incumbent president.

How did the candidates react?

The candidates knew that TV channels that had planned hours of election coverage had dead air to fill, and that they had a chance to set the narrative. Senator Bernie Sanders, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg and senator Elizabeth Warren all made very confident addresses that sounded like victory speeches, although it’s interesting that former vice-president Joe Biden’s speech sounded much less positive. He sounded more like he was trying to buck his supporters up and move on to the next race.

Why is this mess so damaging?

The winner would have preferred to have made their big speech in the full glare of the media spotlight. Now the news agenda moves on to Trump’s State of the Union speech tonight and the New Hampshire primary next week.