Hillary Clinton takes Iowa, beating back Sanders’ strong challenge

Ms Clinton quickly sought to capitalise on the skin-of-her-teeth victory, presenting herself as a victor during a rally in New Hampshire yesterday morning as she and Sanders intensified their competition to win the primary there.

Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images Texas Sen. Ted Cruz beat billionaire businessman Trump – but it’s Florida Sen.

“It’s now a three-person race”, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant told Time magazine. Clinton still holds by far the most likely path to the Democratic nomination, though Sanders is up in polls in New Hampshire, the next nominating contest.

Among Democrats, Bernie Sanders rode a wave of voter enthusiasm to a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton, long considered her party’s front-runner.

We have to be careful about how much we read into the results from Iowa.

“We’re in this to the convention”, Sanders vowed. “Not the best way to do democracy”.

As the evening’s vote counting crawled to its nail-biting peak, Clinton’s campaign had at one point 628 delegates to the next stage in the party’s process while Sanders had 625 delegates, a difference of 49.8 percent to 49.6 percent.

Mr Cruz suggested he was focused on New Hampshire but also on SC, which votes 11 days later.

In past presidential elections, Republican conservative stalwarts who won in Iowa faded as the race moved to other states.

“Hillary goes out and works with what we have to work with”.

Republicans gleefully described the returns as a problem for Clinton.

Republican presidential candidates too were wheels up for the Granite State after the Iowa caucuses.

Supporters of Sanders and Clinton disputed the results in Ames after 60 caucus participants reportedly disappeared from the proceedings.

A number of news outlets, including Fox News, have not yet formally called the contest for the former secretary of state.

Based on these results, Ms Clinton is set to receive 23 of Iowa’s delegates and Sanders will earn 21 delegates. An uncharacteristically humbled Trump, 69, congratulated Cruz and said he still expected to win the Republican nomination.

On the Republican side, Cruz told CNN he has the money and grassroots organization to replicate his Iowa victory in a number of upcoming primaries.

Questions remain on the breadth of support for Ted Cruz within the Republican party as one supporter, Judy Haines said. “Win, lose or draw we have won”.

“As I think about what happened tonight, I think the people of Iowa have sent a very profound message” to the establishment, he said. Marco Rubio for second. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson placed a distant fourth in the race with 9 percent, while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul placed fifth with 5 percent. Though he won over Iowans, New Hampshire is a different electorate.

As Trump and Rubio battled for second place, the senator saw his results as a victory. This is unlikely to help him in liberal-leaning New Hampshire, where Messrs Trump and Rubio are now the favourites.