On Monday night, the Iowa caucuses were held in more than sixteen hundred separate precinct rooms across the state. Pleasantville, twenty-five miles southeast of Des Moines, population seventeen hundred, held its caucus in a gymnasium in Pleasantville High School, home of the Trojans. The volunteer assigned to check people in was named Ben, and he was still undecided about whom he would caucus for. Asked how that could be, with only an hour left to make up his mind, he replied, coolly, “That’s a lot of time.”

The gymnasium was designed not for caucusing but for playing basketball. Along one wall of bleachers, sections were set off for supporters of Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, and Pete Buttigieg. Around the rest of the room, clusters of folding chairs had been set out for the other candidates: a Bernie Sanders section below one basketball hoop, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren sections along the far sideline, and a final section, for “uncommitteds.” There were also signs up for candidates who are still running for President but have skipped Iowa, either intentionally or by virtue of having so few supporters: Michael Bennet, Michael Bloomberg, Tulsi Gabbard, Deval Patrick. At half-court, a table had been set up: this was where the caucus chair, Lois Turnage, and the caucus secretary, Matt Russell, would officiate the proceedings.

Half an hour before the start of the caucus, the room was just beginning to fill up. Tom Roff, the principal of Pleasantville Elementary School, was in one corner, wearing a giant yellow Buttigieg precinct-captain button. Precinct captains are designated by the campaigns to help sway supporters during the multiple rounds of voting that a caucus entails. “There’s probably a lot of people who have already sort of made their No. 1 choice, but I hope that Pete is maybe No. 2 or No. 3,” Roff said. Over in the Sanders section, a mother and daughter, Denese and Avery Robbins, were sitting patiently. “I believe the two-party system is broken,” Denese said. Sanders, she felt, was the most honest candidate, but Buttigieg and Klobuchar were her second and third choices, respectively. “Anybody but Biden,” she said. Across the room, Pam Jordan, Warren’s precinct captain, was attending her first-ever caucus. “I see some people in the Klobuchar camp that I think I can entice over here,” she said. By the uncommitteds, a Sanders volunteer was trying to make a last-minute convert of a white-haired man. “This little ‘Not Me, Us’ phrase is very special,” she said. She handed the man a Sanders sticker. “I will leave you with this. You can do what you want with it.”

A little after 7 p.m., the doors were closed, and the event got under way. People present who weren’t caucusgoers—children, reporters, a few campaign organizers—were instructed to sit in the balcony. Russell, the caucus secretary, took an initial head count: a hundred and fifty-two caucusgoers were present. Twelve delegates to Iowa’s county convention were at stake in the room. To be considered viable after the first round of voting, Turnage and Russell declared, a candidate would need twenty-three supporters in his or her section. Before the first round, supporters of each candidate would get to make a one-minute speech in support of their choice. The speeches would be given in alphabetical order by candidates’ last names. “I don’t think anybody is here for Michael Bennet, so I don’t think we’ll hear from Michael Bennet,” Turnage said.

After the speeches, it was time for the first alignment. Turnage explained the complicated steps that awaited the caucusgoers. They were each to take a two-sided card, on which they would write their candidate preference, depending on who was viable after the first round. She rang a bell and commenced the first round. A young Warren organizer looked on nervously from the balcony. Her name was Sophia Blake; she was twenty years old and a student at Northwestern. She was wearing earrings with pendants shaped like little Elizabeth Warrens. She had interned for the Warren campaign over the summer and had returned in the campaign’s closing days to see the caucuses through. It was obvious from the balcony, though, that there were more people in the Biden, Buttigieg, and Sanders sections than there were in the Warren section. “I have faith in the team that we built on the ground, and, obviously, this is one caucus out of many,” Blake said, looking out at the room. “I was talking to some undecideds. I’m really hoping we can pull through.”

A little after 8 p.m., the first alignment was declared over. Russell went around counting off caucusgoers. Buttigieg had a commanding lead, with forty-four supporters. Biden and Sanders were also viable. Klobuchar, with twenty-one supporters, failed to reach viability by two votes. People groaned. Yang, Steyer, and Warren were also not viable. Turnage explained the next steps of the second alignment: supporters of viable candidates were to stay put. The supporters of all non-viable candidates were now free to change their support to one of the viable groups, whose members were also free to persuade and cajole. People got up from their chairs and mingled. Democratic speed-dating. The Buttigieg section was suddenly very crowded. The Warren section was a ghost town. In the balcony, Blake was staring at her phone, holding back tears. “I’m getting texts from people in other precincts, and there’s others who are doing very, very well, so that’s very reassuring,” she said. “But I’m keeping it together. Well, not really. But I’m trying.”

After fifteen minutes or so, the second alignment was over. Russell did another count. The final result: Buttigieg won the night, with fifty-eight supporters. Biden and Sanders tied for second place, at thirty-one. And Klobuchar came back from non-viability, ending the night with twenty-nine supporters. One lone guy in a baseball cap stayed in the uncommitted chairs, staring out at the room blankly. The Buttigieg camp was exhilarated. Courtney Fleming, who will turn eighteen in April, had come into the room undecided and went over to the Buttigieg group on the second alignment. “I’m not bashing on age, definitely not, because older men and women can definitely get the job done,” she said. “I just like him, and I think he’s more of a moderate.”

The complications weren’t over. Russell explained the formula used to determine how many state delegates each viable candidate would receive. “The way we get to the delegates is that we will take the number of who is affiliated right now, times twelve, which is the number of delegates we have, and then we will divide that by one fifty-two,” he said. Buttigieg would receive five delegates. Klobuchar would receive two delegates. But, here, another twist: Biden and Sanders were tied, so the remaining five delegates would be divided based on the result of the ancient democratic practice of a coin toss. Sanders’s and Biden’s groups sent representatives to the center table. The coin went up. Sanders won three delegates, to Biden’s two.

The caucus was over, but the drama wasn’t. All around the state, precincts were having trouble reporting their results to the Iowa Democratic Party. Pleasantville was no exception. The app that had been built for precincts to convey their results wasn’t working. “Everyone was having trouble with the app, and then everybody had to call in, and then the phones went down,” Russell said. He spent sixty-seven minutes and forty-seven seconds on hold with the state Party, only to be told to text in a photograph of the precinct’s results. Hours after the caucus ended, things still weren’t sorted. No one knew more than what they saw in front of them, or in bits and pieces on Twitter. The campaigns were racing to respond and put the best spin on things. Buttigieg did well in Pleasantville, but how did he do in Spencer, or Fort Dodge? “Pretty much a big mess,” Russell said. “I’m really concerned that we’re putting our first-in-the-nation status in jeopardy.” Earlier in the night, he’d settled a Presidential contest by a coin flip, but things were looking even weirder now.