US DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL candidate Pete Buttigieg has narrowly won the chaotic Iowa caucuses, collecting 14 delegates, ahead of Bernie Sanders with 12, according to the Democratic Party. 

The delayed results were marred by multiple technical issues, and the outcome has been subject to complaints and demands for a “recanvassing” check of the vote.

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Sanders, the leftist senator from Vermont, were separated by a razor-thin margin in the caucuses held last week. 

“You can expect us to be asking the Iowa Democratic party for a recanvass of the discrepancies that we have identified and found for them,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told CNN last night. 

“It’s been handled incompetently from our perspective.”

The national Democratic party chairman has ordered a review of the results following the technological problems and as doubts were raised about the accuracy of the process.

Massachusetts progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren won eight delegates to send to the Democratic convention in July that will choose who takes on Trump in the November election.

Former vice president Joe Biden won six and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar won one.

Both Buttigieg and Biden – whose status as national frontrunner for the nomination was shaken by taking fourth-place in Iowa’s caucuses – said it would be much harder for the party to defeat Trump with Sanders.

The senator’s position at the very left of the American spectrum – with programs like extending the Medicare program to all Americans – have been seized on by the president, who told an interviewer last week, “I think he’s a communist.”

Buttigieg said it would be “a lot harder” for the party to win with Sanders than a more moderate candidate, with Biden similarly telling ABC it would be “incredibly more difficult”.

But the senator has shrugged off criticism he is too radical to beat Trump, pointing to his enthusiastic support among young voters.

The president, fresh from being acquitted at his Senate impeachment trial, will hold a large rally in New Hampshire for his devoted supporters today as he seeks to overshadow the Democratic primary tomorrow. 

© – AFP 2020