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Iowa Caucuses: Cruz cruises for GOP, virtual tie between Clinton & Sanders for Dems

Posted at 5:24 AM, Feb 02, 2016
and last updated 2016-02-02 06:46:27-05

Updates from Iowa:

5:50 a.m.

A large crowd of supporters greeted Bernie Sanders in Bow, New Hampshire, at 5 a.m. after the Democratic presidential candidate arrived from Iowa.

Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in a virtual tie in the Iowa caucuses. He tells the crowd in New Hampshire that his campaign “astounded the world” and is going to “astound the world again” in New Hampshire. The state’s primary is next week.

Sanders says he can’t believe that people stood outside in the cold for about two hours waiting for him to arrive. He jokes, “Something is wrong with you guys!”

4:20 a.m.

Bernie Sanders says his razor-thin contest against Hillary Clinton in Iowa is giving his campaign a “kick-start.” The Democratic presidential candidate says it shows the American people that “this is a campaign that can win.”

Sanders tells reporters traveling aboard his flight to New Hampshire early Tuesday that his message of addressing wealth inequality resonated with voters in Iowa. He predicts it will resonate in the early voting states of New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Polls show the Vermont senator leading Clinton in New Hampshire. But Sanders would not say whether he considers anything less than victory there a successful outcome. He says his campaign is in it “for the long haul” and predicts that “we are going to win some states, we are going to lose some states.”

But Sanders says he took a “giant step” in Iowa to overcome doubts among voters that he could win a general election.

1 a.m.

How close was the Iowa race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders? Democrats flipped coins in some precincts to determine how to award an extra county delegate, a rare but longstanding procedure to break ties.

Party rules call for a coin flip when support for candidates is even but a precinct has an odd number of delegates to award.

The Des Moines Register reports that Clinton won coin tosses at precincts in Davenport and Des Moines.

The newspaper says party officials ordered another coin flip to decide a dispute between the campaigns at an Ames precinct. Clinton won that toss, too.

Iowa Democratic Party spokesman Sam Lau noted that the flips were to determine county convention delegates, which are only fractions of the state delegates awarded to candidates.

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12:50 a.m.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign team is casting her performance in the Iowa caucuses as a win, even though she is separated from rival Bernie Sanders by just a few hundred votes.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon tells reporters that, “we believe strongly that we won tonight.”

He’s pointing to Clinton’s capture of at least 22 delegates to the party’s national convention to Sanders’ 21, with one left to be decided.

Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri says: “We feel like we have great momentum going into New Hampshire. This was a very hard fought state.”

The Associated Press is not declaring a winner in the Iowa caucuses at this time because of the closeness of the race.

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12:38 a.m.

Iowa Democratic Party officials say they are gathering results from a small number of precincts where those in charge failed to report results in Monday’s caucuses.

Polk County Democratic Party Chairman Tom Henderson says he is frustrated that some precincts in his county have failed to report results in a timely fashion.

By midnight, he says he’d tracked down results from 166 of the 167 precincts in the state’s largest county and that someone is being sent to knock on the door of the chairman of the last outstanding precinct.

Henderson says, “I’m frustrated because we do things better than that.”

But he adds, “This is a situation where we have an election that is a near tie. We want to make sure it’s accurate.”

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11:45 p.m.

Ted Cruz’s victory in the Iowa caucuses means he’ll collect eight delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio each get seven from the opening contest in the 2016 presidential race.

Coming next is Ben Carson with three, followed by Rand Paul and Jeb Bush — one each.

Delegates are awarded in proportion to the statewide vote.

There are three delegates still to be awarded.