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What are the Iowa caucuses and how do they work?
Tens of thousands of Iowa Democrats on Feb. 3 will decide the results of their presidential caucus in a contest to challenge President Donald Trump.
DES MOINES - Pete Buttigieg appeared to be leading the Iowa caucus by a razor-thin margin with 100% of precincts reporting Thursday after a days-long delay in results spurred by technical difficulties that called the accuracy of the process into question.
The Democratic candidate and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana appeared to lead with 26.2% and 564.012 state delegate equivalents.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared to be narrowly behind with 26.1% and 562.497 state delegate equivalents.
Campaigning in New Hampshire, Sanders called the Iowa Democratic Party's management of the caucuses a “screw-up" that has been "extremely unfair" to the candidates and their supporters.
“We've got enough of Iowa,” he said later Thursday at a CNN town hall. “I think we should move on to New Hampshire.”
Buttigieg was also at a CNN town hall on Thursday, and said, “That’s fantastic news.”
"First of all, I want to say, Sen. Sanders clearly had a great night too and I congratulate him and his supporters," he said, according to the network.
Amid the chaos, Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, on Thursday called for a “recanvass” of the results of the Iowa caucuses, saying it was needed to “assure public confidence" after three days of technical issues and delays.
”Enough is enough," the party leader wrote on Twitter.
The Iowa Democratic Party apologized for technical glitches with an app that slowed down reporting of results from Monday's caucuses and has spent the week attempting to verify results.
But it was unclear if the party planned to follow the directive of the national leader to recanvass those results, a process that would likely require state officials to review caucus math worksheets completed at more than 1,600 caucus sites to ensure the calculations were done correctly and matched the reported results.
Iowa chairman Troy Price suggested in a statement Thursday that he would only pursue a recanvass if one was requested by a campaign.
Iowa marked the first contest in a primary season that will span all 50 states and several U.S. territories, ending at the party’s national convention in July.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Los Angeles.