The Iowa caucuses, Monday, February 3, are the first step in the Democratic nomination contest for the November 3 presidential election, and "Le Monde" launches its campaign logbook. A daily update, first of all five days a week until September, with campaign facts, political advertisements, polls, maps and figures that allow us to follow and experience the most important electoral competition in the world.
The Democratic nomination contest started in the biggest confusion in Iowa on Monday evening February 3. While the first state to vote is regularly criticized for its sociological non-representativeness, the local Democratic Party has weighed on the file for this Midwest state by being unable to communicate before midnight the results of the caucuses organized at the end of the day . Party officials have suggested inconsistencies in the figures they received to justify the delay.
The complexity of the voting procedure, in two phases, which allows some supporters of candidates to refer to other names if their first choice does not cross the fateful bar of 15% of the vote, has been reinforced by the will publish the interim results, unlike previous years.
The absence of any final figure allowed the main candidates, in a hurry to fly to New Hampshire, where the next primaries will be held on February 11, to express themselves in the middle of the evening by claiming all in one way or another. another victory.
The latest polls routinely led former vice-president Joe Biden, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, and youngest race mayor Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend (Indiana). The latter bet a lot on this stage in Iowa. A victory for him was undoubtedly essential to appear as an alternative to the former vice-president, a centrist like him.
The Republican Party, which had suffered similar setbacks in 2012 by mistakenly attributing the victory to Mitt Romney, before granting it to its rival, Rick Santorum, took advantage of this situation to mock the amateurism of the Democrats and instill suspicion . "It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of this process", said Brad Parscale, campaign manager for Donald Trump. "And these are the same people who want to manage our entire health system? " he pretended to wonder.
