Pete Buttigieg is leading Democrats in the first big batch of Iowa election data released finally released Tuesday by the state party after a faulty app botched Monday night's caucus results.

Buttigieg, 38, who declared Monday night that he would be 'victorious,' was leading the field with 26.9 per cent of delegates, the key measure of success, according to the first batch of returns, with 62 per cent of precincts reporting.

He was followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, at 25.1 per cent, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, at 18.3 percent. Joe Biden was at 15.6 percent in the returns.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, from neighboring Minnesota, was in fifth place, with 13 per cent of the vote. She has been banking on a strong performance in in Iowa to vault her to the national stage.

Andrew Yang, who has drawn big crowds of young Iowans, was at just 1 percent. In Iowa's controversial caucus system, candidates who draw less than 15 per cent are not deemed viable, and supporters are required to caucus for other candidates.

But the other measure of success - final round votes - put Buttigieg narrowly in second place to Bernie Sanders with 27,030 votes to the Vermont senator's 28,220.

Buttigieg addressed the results at his Tuesday night rally in Laconia, New Hampshire.

'They are not complete, but a majority is in, and they show our campaign in first place. So, we don't know all of the numbers, but we know this, a campaign that started a year ago with four staff members, no name recognition, no money, just a big idea,' he said.

Buttigieg, the first openly gay major party candidate, choked up talking about what the results meant to him.

'It validates for a kid somewhere in a community wondering if he belongs or she belongs or they belong in their own family that if you believe in yourself and your country, there is a lot backing up the belief,' he said.

Finally: The result the nation had been waiting for - and it confirmed Pete Buttigieg's daring victory speech was based in reality - although two-thirds of results have still to come through

Sorry about that: Troy Price, the chair of the Iowa Democratic party, promised the results were accurate - but admitted the process had been 'unacceptable'

I won it (so far)! Pete Buttigieg's dramatic gamble to claim victory in Iowa began to pay off on Tuesday afternoon as the first results from two-thirds of precincts put him narrowly ahead of Bernie Sanders

'And now, we come to new Hampshire. A state that famously thinks for itself, and as we enter this new phase and this week ahead to convince New Hampshire to support this vision and then go on, I have never been more confident in our campaign, in our team, and in the vision that brought to us this point.'

But Sanders offered no concession. His campaign adviser Jeff Weaver said: 'We want to thank the people of Iowa. We are gratified that in the partial data released so far it’s clear that in the first and second round more people voted for Bernie than any other candidate in the field.'

The news came after nearly 24 hours of chaos, after the Iowa party failed to release the results after experiencing widespread technical difficulties that were attributed to an app that allowed precinct chairs to report election information.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price apologized for the snafu that upended Democratic politics.

'The bottom line is that we hit a stumbling block on the back end of the reporting of the data but the one thing I want you to know: we know this data is accurate,' he said.

He reassured Americans about the outcome, after multiple candidates put their spin on the results.

'The one thing they will say is that the underlying data that — the raw data — is secure. It was always secure. This was a coding error in one of the pieces on the back-end, but the raw data, the data that has come in, is secure,' he said.

'We have been working day and night to make sure that the results are accurate,' he pledged, after party officials told stunned media in Iowa that it would not release results Monday night.

He called the reporting that occurred 'unacceptable' and said he was sorry. 'As chair of the party, I apologize deeply for this,' he said in a televised news conference.

The strong performance by Buttigieg came as he was ridiculed by other party members for declaring victory before the results were in. Rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders put out his own unofficial count Monday night that had him leading the field in areas tabulated by his staff.

In fact, at least as far as the first 62 per cent precincts were concerned, it is Buttigieg who is the unofficial leader.

'It took longer than we expected,' he said of the count.

Price wouldn't say when the full 100 per cent of results would be available.

When asked about President Trump's allegation the results were rigged, Price responded: 'We have said all along, that we would make the caucuses more transparent, and this year, we are reporting out more data than we have ever reported before and in addition to that, we have paper trails that we have never had before. So we will take the time to verify the results, but the results are based off of what happened in the precincts last night.'

And he wouldn't say if he would resign as party chair over the fiasco, Price demurred.

'When I ran for chair, I made a commitment to see the caucus process through. That is what I am working on. That is what I will continue to work on, and whatever happens that, it is to be determined.'

'Anyway, thank you all, folks, the results are coming in, and we will see you later,' he concluded as he ended his press conference in Des Moines, moving rapidly off stage.

The event was packed with reporters who stayed behind to cover the turmoil in Iowa, even as the candidates hastily made their way to New Hampshire for political events.

At the same time, Democratic presidential candidates put their own inexact spin on the Iowa caucuses Tuesday morning as they headed to campaign events across New Hampshire.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts spoke almost as soon as she landed in New Hampshire – the next big battleground on the political calendar – declaring herself satisfied with her performance after flying direct from Des Moines.

'When I left Iowa, I said it was too close to call, and it still is, but I feel good,' she told reporters. 'It is good to be in New Hampshire.' She declared her own organization, with hundreds already deployed across the country, up to the task.

'This is an organization that is built for the long haul,' she said.

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All down to the paperwork:

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who declared himself 'victorious,' continued to talk up his performance, which he called 'phenomenal,' on Tuesday in Manchester, New Hampshire

Buttigieg, who declared himself 'victorious' and said his backers 'shocked the nation' in a Monday night speech continued to talk up his performance, which he called 'phenomenal.'

'They said we shouldn't even be here. And now, here we are, in the position that we are in, coming into New Hampshire for what we think will be another historic night a week from today,' he said, referencing Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary.

Buttigieg was the first of his rivals to wake up and do an early TV interview, speaking to CBS. He had a morning event set for Manchester and made a coffee stop in Nashua. Warren had an event planned in Keene, former Vice President Joe Biden had one set for Nashua, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had an evening rally on tap just outside of Manchester.

The Sanders campaign put out numbers in the early hours of Tuesday representing tallies from 40 per cent of precincts across Iowa showing the Vermont senator ahead of Buttigieg in all three ways results can be tallied.

Buttigieg then put out his own information. It showed him getting 28 per cent of state delegate equivalents in Iowa, which would be a strong showing – but did not reveal whether another candidates did better and who did worse.

Jeff Weaver, Sanders' 2016 campaign manager and a top adviser on the senator's 2020 campaign, gave new tallies to reporters Tuesday afternoon before the campaign plane took off for the Granite State. The new numbers represent 60 per cent of caucus sites, Weaver said.

On first alignment Sanders got 29.08 per cent, Buttigieg got 21.63 per cent, Warren came in third with 19.51 per cent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar came in fourth with 12.27 per cent and Biden, long considered the party's frontrunner, came in a shocking fifth place with just 12.04 per cent.

The way the Iowa caucuses work is that if candidates don't get 15 per cent of caucusgoers at a particular precinct they're not viable to earn delebates, so the second set of numbers are the percentages that reflect voters' second-place preferences.

For those, the Sanders campaign still had their guy on top - with 29.4 per cent of the vote. Sanders is again followed by Buttigieg at 24.87 per cent and Warren, at 20.65 per cent. In the second tally, Biden gets more support than Klobuchar. He's at 12.92 per cent and she's at 11.18 per cent, according to the Sanders campaign.

'We anticipate that this will hold,' Weaver told reporters, according to The Intercept.

Sanders also spoke.

'Obviously, I am disappointed,' the Vermont senator expressed. 'I suspect I speak for all the candidates, all of their supporters and the people of Iowa that the Iowa Democratic Party has not been able to come up with timely election results.'

'I can't understand why that has happened, but it has happened,' Sanders added.

Asked about Buttigieg's rush to victory, Sanders said, 'I don't know how anybody could claim this as a victory.'

'We are not declaring victory,' he also said, explaining that his campaign was sharing internal numbers for the sake of 'transparency.'

Klobuchar said in Manchester that 'we know that we did incredibly well' in Iowa.

'We won a bunch of precincts and delegates, places we didn't expect to win and we're feeling good,' Klobuchar added.

Biden advisor Symone Sanders blasted Iowa for blowing its handling of results in comments to reporters in New Hampshire Tuesday.

'The app failed last night. The backup phone process failed last night. You couldn't drive your ballot to the Iowa Democratic Party last night,' she fumed. 'The process, there were grotesque, grotesque breakdowns in the process and the integrity in this election.

'We implore the Iowa Demoratic party to get it right,' she said. Asked about candidates declaring victory, Sanders said: 'It's just not accurate. There is no data. Victory is determined by state delegate equivalencies, ladies and gentlemen. We don't have any of those right now.'

'Iowa is the beginning and not the end,' she said. 'We have to wait for the data, frankly. The Iowa Democratic party is being implored to get it right,' she told DailyMail.com in Nashua.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) briefly talks to reporters after arriving on a flight from Iowa to the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport February 04, 2020 in Manchester, New Hampshire

Joe Biden's campaign rolled out the endorsement of Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of JFK

Biden rolled out the endorsement of Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late John F. Kennedy and who President Barack Obama named ambassador to Japan.

Kennedy called Biden the Democratic Party's 'best bet to win the White House, keep the gains we made in the House, and put the Senate in play.'

Andrew Yang, whose campaign slogan is M.A.T.H. - Make America Think Harder - stopped short of trying to massage the numbers absent information, with his supporters not reaching a 15 per cent viability threshold in some precincts.

'We're very excited to get results like the rest of the country,' said Yang.

There are 21 campaign events scheduled for the Democratic contenders - including Tulsi Gabbard and Deval Patrick - on Tuesday throughout the state, according to a New Hampshire candidate tracker.

Buttigieg emerged in a Nashua, N.H., coffee shop - no doubt need the jolt of caffeine after the late night of waiting for results. At the top of his Manchester event he joked, 'I think it's morning,' as he wished his crowd of supporters a good one.

In Nashua he had a cup of joe with the town's mayor, Jim Donchess.

He was optimistic results from Iowa would be in Tuesday although he declined to answer a question from reporters with him about whether it was premature to declare himself the winner.

'Well, I think it's safe to say no one in the country is more impatient than I am to hear the official results from the party, but we've also put out the results that we've got from over 1,200 districts our precinct organization reported based on the procedure that they were trained to do. And based on that, it was a phenomenal night for us,' he told CBS This Morning on Tuesday.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg emerged in New Hampshire Tuesday morning as the Democratic presidential contenders moved on to the next contest

Buttigieg had coffee with Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess and other voters

Buttigieg declared himself the winner in Iowa after technical glitches and snafus prevented the state party from announcing any caucus results Monday night.

'We don't know all of the results. But we do know that by the time it's all said and done, Iowa: you have shocked the nation. Because by all indications we are going on to New Hampshire victorious,' Buttigieg told cheering supporters - in the kind of statement that might ordinarily follow a strong measure of public information.

Instead there was no official result in any form, and the Iowa Democratic Party rushed out a statement promising that they had not been hacked and would now be using paper results with a count which will stretch into daylight on Tuesday morning.

Biden's campaign issued a letter from its lawyers warning that the results could not be trusted - but did not say how they believed they had performed.

But Buttigieg, a Harvard and Oxford-educated former McKinsey management consultant who was a Naval Reserve intelligence officer in Afghanistan, swept in with a move of extraordinary daring.

He told his supporters in Des Moines they had started a movement. 'You joined your names to say that the time has come to turn the page and join a new chapter in America,' he told them.

'With hope in our heart and fire in our bellies we are going on to New Hampshire, on to the nomination and on to chart a new course for this nation we love!' he said.

He spoke at a made-for-TV victory celebration, with supporters cheering on an elevated platform. All it was lacking was evidence from state party officials that he had won the most support.

'No results have been released,' noted CNN's Anderson Cooper after his network aired Buttigieg's speech.

Buttigieg, 38, had performed well in many state precincts, including one on the Drake University campus nearby where he held his rally – although he trailed Warren on the first ballot.

At another caucus site that DailyMail.com observed, this one in Norwalk, Iowa, near the Des Moines airport, Buttigieg came in first, with Klobuchar and Sanders also winning delegates.

I've won! The daring moment Pete Buttigieg delivered a full-blown victory speech despite no official results being released as the entire counting process was plunged into crisis with no results delivered

I did it - trust me... Pete Buttigieg takes to the stage in Des Moines to declare 'by all indications we are victorious' and promise 'we go on to New Hampshire and to the nominaiton'

The real official results: How the candidates fared - at exactly the moment Pete Buttigieg declared victory

'You have shocked the nation': Pete Buttigieg made a bold victory speech saying 'by all indications' he was 'victorious' - but with the results in crisis after an app which was supposed to make reporting results simple crashed, the only thing his rivals would agree with was his verdict that Iowa shocked the nation

Power move: Pete Buttigieg declared himself 'victorious' in a daring speech which came after his four main rivals did not do so - with the absence of official results not holding him back

I've won: The Buttigieg campaign said privately that it had its own data, allowing the former South Bend mayor to claim he had come top at the same point that official results gave him the same rating as every other candidate: 0.0%

He will be first gentleman: Pete Buttigieg embraced his husband Chasten and called him the future first gentleman as he gave a victory speech with no official results underlying it

His remarks followed other Democrats who tried to put the best face on the night, but in a far more restrained form.

'The Iowa Democratic Party is working to get these results – to get them straight,' said Biden at his own caucus-night party.

'We're going to walk out of here with our share of delegates,' saying he didn't know exactly,' he said, hedging. He said indications are that 'it's going to be close.'

'We don't know exactly what it is yet, but we feel good about where we are,' said Biden.

TRUST US, WE WEREN'T HACKED: DEMOCRATS' PANICKED STATEMENT Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director Mandy McClure said: 'We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. ' In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report. 'This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion.' Advertisement

Klobuchar also found ways to express optimism absent any pubic information about how she fared.

'We know there's delays but we know one thing. We are punching above our weight. My heart is full tonight,' she said at a rally outside Des Moines.

'Somehow and some way I'm going to get on a plane to New Hampshire,' she said.

Klobuchar declared: 'We have beaten the odds every step of the way.'

Sanders, who surged in polls in the run-up to the caucuses, also held back.

'Let me begin by stating that I imagine, have a strong feeling that at some point the results will be announced,' he said.

'And when those results are announced, I have a good feeling we're going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.'

The fiasco unfolded after caucusing around the state started at 7pm Central Standard Time. Three hours later, not a single precinct's results were officially in.

'We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report,' Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director Mandy McClure said in a statement. 'This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion.'

The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results,' McClure added. Earlier, other Iowa officials had pointed a finger at the app.

Des Moines County Chair Tom Courtney told the Associated Press that it was 'a mess' and organizers were having to call in the results to the party.

CNN reported that party officials are meeting with representatives from the campaigns.

This is the first year that three separate results were to be released to the public. The number of caucus-goers who initially came to support candidates, then the second vote - how caucus-goers re-aligned if their candidates weren't viable. Finally, the number of delegates won by each candidate will be reported.

Each of the precincts is using 'presidential preference' cards for the first time, so there will be a paper trail of the vote.

Bernie Sanders' campaign said they had tallied results from around 40 per cent of precincts themselves, and found the Vermont senator coming out on top in both initial vote count, votes after eliminations and number of delegates won

Elizabeth Warren delivered an optimistic speech following the non-result, though stopped short of claiming any kind of victory as chaos reigned over the ballot count

Biden's camp warned that early results cannot be trusted and urged supporters to wait for the official counts to come in. He suggested the results would be 'close' but that he would be coming away with a share of delegates

Amy Klobuchar claimed her campaign is 'punching above our weight', despite having no results to off Monday night

Andrew Yang will be hoping his campaign gets the support it needs to continue after final votes counts are released Tuesday

Shadowy app behind vote-count chaos in Iowa 'Inconsistencies' with an app that was supposed to track the results of the Democrat caucuses in Iowa threw the vote into chaos overnight - with zero per cent of precincts reporting early Tuesday. The app was created by Shadow, Inc., a technology firm that was created in January last year after data and messaging service Groundbase was acquired by Democrat non-profit ACRONYM. Finance records show the Iowa Democratic Party paid $60,000 to Shadow, Inc. for website development at the back end of last year which was spent on the app, according to Huffington Post. Shadow's CEO Gerard Niemira, product manager Ahna Rao and COO James Hickey all worked on the Hillary for America campaign which was defeated by Donald Trump in 2016. Other staff include alumni of Obama's presidential campaign, as well as Google, Apple and the DNC. Advertisement

How the results will be done: The hand-filled ballots which are now going to be used by the Democrats to work out the results of the Iowa caucus

What is going on? Bernie Sanders supporter David Soll, who had traveled from Rockford, Illinois, to campaign for the socialist candidate, was among those caught up in the results fiasco

First to the microphone: Amy Klobuchar rushed in front of the cameras as the scale of the fiasco became clear and said that while she did not know the results, she was sure her campaign had 'punched above our weight'

Down - but is he out? A left-over Joe Biden sign at the Drake University Olmsted Center in Des Moines

Ready for the caucus: At Hoover High School, voters headed to the basketball court to show their support for their favored candidate

Can I count on you? Elizabeth Warren speaks to voters - and one of their children - at a Des Moines caucus

Feeling the Bern: A Sanders volunteer is ready to persuade fellow Iowans at the Maple Grove Methodist Church in Des Moines

How it works: The Kellogg fire station is ready with locals asked to line up under their first preference. Anyone who backs a candidate under 15% is then asked to move to one of the candidates who scored over 15%.

Here to vote: Registration at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, just before the 7pm starting point for the caucus

Ready for Bernie: Volunteers prepare to try to persuade caucus-goers that they should back their candidate, who is ahead by a tiny margin in the polls

Bernie Sanders won the support of 14 out of the 15 caucus-goers at the 'satellite' caucus in Ottumwa, Iowa Monday at noon. The group was largely Ethiopian immigrants who work at a nearby pork processing plan

How to understand the Iowa Caucuses (and why there may be more than one 'winner') The Iowa caucuses are essentially small local meetings where neighbors and strangers stand up to show their support for a particular candidate, and to persuade others to join them. Iowa's 41 national delegates are up for grabs, but the real stakes for the candidates are all about momentum. The caucuses are the first opportunity for Democrats to express their preferences in what´s been a long and tumultuous primary. They set the tone for the monthlong sprint through the early primary states, after which the field of candidates is typically culled. The winner usually receives a boost in media attention and fundraising that can propel them through subsequent contests. An unexpectedly bad performance, meanwhile, can hobble a candidate. Attendees hold letters reading Caucus during a campaign event in Coralville, Iowa The caucuses don´t always pick the eventual nominee, but for Democrats they´ve been more predictive - every winner since 2000 has gone on to become the Democratic nominee. And historically, they´ve been known to catapult underdog candidates´ campaigns to prominence - like they did with Barack Obama in 2008, or Jimmy Carter in 1976. WHERE AND WHEN DO THEY TAKE PLACE - AND WHO PARTICIPATES? The caucuses begin at 7 p.m. CST on Monday. Democrats gather in school gymnasiums, union halls and community centers - known in caucus parlance as precincts. There are 1,678 precincts in Iowa this year and an additional 99 satellite precincts, which are for caucuses held outside of the state or at different times of the day and in locations that may be more accessible to those with disabilities or those who have to work during the main event. Some precincts could have hundreds of Iowans show up, and some may have fewer than 10. The 2008 Democratic caucuses set a record when nearly 240,000 Iowans turned out; this year, party operatives are expecting turnout to be big, but likely not record-breaking. Any registered Democrat who will be 18 by election day can participate, which includes 17-year-olds with an upcoming birthday. And Iowans can newly register or switch their party registration at their caucus site the day of - so campaigns have been courting disaffected Republicans and new voters across Iowa. WHAT HAPPENS AT A CAUCUS? There are essentially two rounds of voting in the caucuses. When all the caucusgoers at a precinct have signed in, the attendees elect a caucus chair, who directs the proceedings. Representatives of the campaigns have an opportunity to stand up and give a last-minute pitch for their candidate, and then the caucuses begin, with a process known as the 'first alignment.' That´s where attendees gather in the designated area for their favored candidate. In most precincts, any candidate that receives the support of 15% of the people in the room is considered 'viable' and moves on to the next round of voting. Caucusgoers who chose a viable candidate on their first round are locked in and can´t choose a new candidate on the second. Democratic presidential candidate former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg's shadow is cast on the Iowas state flag in Coralville, Iowa Supporters of candidates who didn´t meet that threshold, however, have four options: They can support a viable candidate, or join with supporters of another non-viable candidate close to 15% support to get them to viability. Alternately, they can try to entice supporters of other non-viable candidates over to theirs to get them over the threshold. Or, they can go home. This part of the caucuses - known as realignment - is the most crucial, and typically the most chaotic, portion of the night. Well-organized campaigns have volunteers, staffers and surrogates working the room, trying to win over caucusgoers from opposing campaigns. It´s part of the reason why having staff and surrogates who know their area and have built a community there is so important for the campaigns. At the end of realignment, the caucus chair takes a final count of the room, and transmits the numbers to the Iowa Democratic Party. Changes from 2016 will allow for additional reporting of caucus results HOW ARE THE RESULTS CALCULATED? The results in each precinct are used by the Iowa Democratic Party to calculate what´s known as the 'state delegate equivalent,' or how many delegates each candidate gets at the Iowa Democratic Party convention. That number ultimately translates to how many of Iowa´s 41 national delegates each candidate gets at the national convention. HOW ARE THIS YEAR´S CAUCUSES DIFFERENT FROM YEARS PAST? For the first time, caucusgoers will record their choices on a slip of paper, which they´ll sign to certify their support. The caucus leaders will collect those presidential preference cards and turn them into the Iowa Democratic Party, and they´ll be used if any candidate requests a recount. This year, there are only two rounds of alignment, rather than the multiple rounds in years past, and supporters of a viable candidate after the first alignment are locked in to that candidate. In previous caucuses, every attendee could choose a new candidate on each realignment. The satellite caucuses are new, and the Iowa Democratic Party is allowing attendees to check in early rather than at their precinct site, a move aimed to cut down on the long lines and wait times in years past. But the biggest change is the change in how the Iowa Democratic Party will report its results. Previously, they only released the state delegate equivalent numbers; now, they´re releasing the raw totals from the first and second alignments, as well as the state delegate equivalents. The Associated Press will be deciding the winner based on state delegate equivalents - but with more data being released, the campaigns have signaled they plan to spin the numbers in their favor, whatever the eventual result. - Associated Press Advertisement

This is how they do it: Caucus goers fill in preference cards as a permanent record of votes

What counts: At the West Des Moines Christian Church, an election official counts up support

To young to back me: Elizabeth Warren greets a young supporter at Roosevelt High School, Des Moines

Rivals: A Joe Biden and a Pete Buttigieg precinct captain go head to head at Maple Grove Methodist Church in West Des Moines. The two moderates are both behind Bernie Sanders

Read for Buttigieg: The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor, has his supporters ready to push for support in Roosevelt High School

Something to show for it: One voter was knitting her way through the caucus at Maple Grove Methodist Church in West Des Moines