In a last-minute all-staff call around noon, Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, told aides that the Iowa Democratic Party had been incompetent and the delayed results were frustrating. But, he said, it was critical to appreciate what had just happened despite receiving the most negative news coverage of any 2020 campaign.

With 62 percent of precincts counted, initial results released Tuesday showed Sanders and Pete Buttigieg in a close race for first place, and Sanders aides think there is a good chance they will win in the end.

When Sanders jumped on a chartered plane from Iowa to New Hampshire, some of his first comments were likewise addressed to volunteers, who had flooded the first-in-the-nation caucus state to pull him across the finish line.

“I want to take this opportunity as we leave Iowa and head to New Hampshire to thank the thousands and thousands of volunteers that helped us knock on hundreds of thousands of doors,” he said.

This was not what the Sanders campaign had expected to happen, to put it mildly. Excitement had been building among his team and its allies for days leading up to the Iowa caucuses. While campaigning throughout the state, Sanders himself appeared in a good mood, smiling and cracking more jokes than usual. He said his wife, Jane, would make a great first lady; Rep. Ilhan Omar, a top surrogate, said at events that they were going to send Sanders to the White House.

Then on Monday, hundreds of Sanders’ supporters — his Iowa precinct whips and captains; Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Mark Pocan; members of the Sunrise Movement, a group of young climate change activists; campaign co-chair Rep. Ro Khanna — packed into a hotel next to the airport for what felt like it could be an historic night. The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd milled around, along with reporters from around the world.

Instead of watching cable TV pundits grapple with the fact that a democratic socialist had won the Iowa caucuses, though, the Sanders campaign and his supporters were left irritated as the night dragged on without the Iowa Democratic Party releasing any numbers.

“We all felt very confused and frustrated when the results weren’t coming in,” said Evan Weber, national political director of the Sunrise Movement, who spoke at the caucus night event. “Young people already have an immense amount of distrust for the Democratic Party because we see the ways in which the establishment has consistently shut us and our issues out in favor of maintaining a broken status quo. Incidents like this don’t help repair trust in the party or the system as a whole, and make it harder to convince young voters that the process is worth participating in.”

The Sunrise Movement had poured an enormous amount of energy into Sanders’ campaign in Iowa, gathering a reported 7,000 pledge-to-caucus cards from young people and making 18,000 calls to residents in the last week. Some high schoolers disrupted a caucus site at their cafeteria, saying, “What do we want? A Green New Deal! When do we want it? Now!”

When Sanders came onstage, he tried to lighten the mood. The Vermont senator joked that he had “a strong feeling that at some point” the Iowa results will be released — and added that “I have a good feeling that we’re going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.”

Then, being Sanders, he delivered more or less his typical stump speech.

The feeling at the party wasn’t gloom and doom. CBS reported that the smell of marijuana wafted through the air during Sanders’ remarks. Some Sanders fans talked about how, if he eventually placed first, followed by Buttigieg second, Elizabeth Warren third and Joe Biden fourth, it would be about the best possible outcome.

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But the mood was tense and anticlimactic. What could have been an historic night for Sanders and his movement was not — at least, not in the way they had hoped.

In the wee hours of the morning Tuesday, Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ senior adviser, lashed out at Iowa Democratic Party leader Troy Price in a call with the 2020 presidential campaigns, saying “the whole process has been a fraud for 100 years.” He told POLITICO that “there is no doubt” that Nevada, which had been planning until Tuesday to use the same app that failed in Iowa, should “disregard" it. On the flight to New Hampshire, Sanders said he was “disappointed” that Iowa Democrats couldn’t release timely results.

“It would’ve been nice to get the official results sooner to provide some sort of closure to the thousands of volunteers and staffers around the state who worked so hard in preparation for this date, but it is what it is,” said Sanders surrogate and Linn County Board of Supervisors member Stacey Walker.” But, he added, “Sanders’ team is committed to replicating their program of voter outreach and turnout across the country.”

On Tuesday, Shannon Jackson, Sanders’ New Hampshire state director, sent a similar message to aides in an email. He said “events in Iowa have made our work in New Hampshire even more important! And we are ready!” He instructed staff that the talking points from national headquarters were that “we don’t know the final results tonight but we feel very good about where we’re at.” And, he said, “Go get some sleep — we have a big week ahead and have to make every second count. Onwards to victory!”