DES MOINES — Pete Buttigieg had a narrow lead over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses in partial results released Tuesday afternoon by the state Democratic Party after a chaotic night that put the presidential race in a frustrating limbo while endangering the future of the first-in-the-nation contest.
With data released from 62 percent of the state’s precincts, Buttigieg had 26.9 percent of the state delegates awarded by the caucuses. The former mayor of South Bend, Ind., led Sanders, who won 25.1 percent. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was third with 18.3 percent and former vice president Joe Biden next at 15.6 percent.
A second batch of results released late Tuesday solidified Buttigieg’s lead. With 71 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders was a close second.
The release of only partial figures about 18 hours after the full results had been expected led Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price to “apologize deeply” even as he defended the delay as necessary to make sure that “unacceptable” reporting problems didn’t mar the data.
“My number one priority has been on ensuring the accuracy and the integrity of the results and we have been working all night to be in the best position to report results,” he told reporters. “The bottom line is we hit a stumbling block on the back end of the reporting of the data but . . . we know this data is accurate.”
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