In the beginning of the week the Iowa Caucus voting took place, and the results were intriguing. 

What is the Iowa Caucus? 

The Iowa Caucus is the first official vote of the primary season. It gives every candidate an idea on how they are favored in the country’s eyes. It is not the final vote to see who will serve the next term as president. 

What Happened at the 2020 Iowa Caucus? The democratic party voted on February 3rd, but the results did not get posted until the evening of Tuesday the 4th. The Republican party voted at the same time and their results were released to the public significantly faster. Democratic officials are blaming a “coding error” in the app used to tabulate votes and due to the app not working the votes had to be hand counted, delaying the official results. 62% of the votes came out Tuesday with Pete Buttiegieg leading at 26.9%

As the 2020 Presidential Election creeps closer, the candidates are gearing up to take on one another for the title of President. The Primary season has featured one of the most diverse groups of candidates in the history of the United States. But who are these candidates? 

The Republicans currently have three people campaigning, one of which is the incumbent Donald J. Trump. He has served one term as President and in that time he has lowered unemployment rates down to record lows, forced Mexico to help stop illegal immigration, and his administration proposed a rule to prohibit Title X Funding from going to any clinic that performs abortions. Trump is focusing his campaign on the slogan “Keep America Great”. In the Iowa caucus, Trump got an overwhelming 97.1% of the Republican vote, followed by Walsh and Weld.

There are currently 11 Democrats campaigning for presidency. These candidates include Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigeig, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang. The top 4 Democratic candidates in Iowa were Buttigeig, Sanders, Warren and Biden. These contenders received the most votes in the democratic Iowa caucuses. 

Pete Buttigeig is leading the polls right now in Iowa with 26.9%. He is the youngest candidate in the race, and part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Favored by many different groups of people, Buttigeig has promosied to work across party lines for the betterment of the United States, as he demonstrated as Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. In Indiana Pete lowered the amount of poverty by a third, and cut unemployment rates in half. 

Bernie Sanders is next in Iowa, with 25.1%. Sanders is one of the older candidates and believes strongly in college for all and the cancelling of student debt. How he plans to do this is not fully explained, but Sanders wants to use Wall Street Tax money. 

Elizabeth Warren finished the top 3 frontrunners in Iowa, with 18.3% of the vote. Warren has similar views to Sanders when it comes to affordable education, however her proposal for debt relief is only for households with under 250K yearly income. Warren has spoken on gun control and her plans to raise the minimum age to own a gun.

Joe Biden came in fourth at the Iowa Caucus, gathering 15.6% of the vote. Biden is the former Vice President to Barack Obama and ran for president unsuccessfully twice before. He wants to make changes in the US to help reduce the effect of climate change. Biden wants a 100% clean energy economy by 2050. 

These candidates and more will be participating in the New Hampshire primaries next week. Until the primary vote in NH, the candidates will be visiting multiple locations and giving speeches and holding rallies. The New Hampshire primary is scheduled for February 11th, 2020.