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Former Vice President Joe Biden is calling Iowa a "gut punch" but says he isn't "going anywhere" after a poor showing in Monday's Democratic caucuses.
With results reported from 86% of the precincts, Biden was in fourth place, trailing former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - who were running neck-and-neck - and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in third place. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar trailed Biden.
Campaigning in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary next week, Biden said he wouldn't "sugarcoat" his disappointing showing in Iowa.
Biden is a centrist who calls himself the most electable candidate to take on President Donald Trump in November. He led most of the voter polls even before declaring his candidacy.
"There are an awful lot of folks out there who wrote off this campaign ... they've been trying to do that from the moment I entered the race. Well, I've got news for them. I'm not going anywhere," he said.
Biden, a former senator from Delaware, unsuccessfully sought the presidency twice before, in 1988 and 2008. He dropped out of the race in 2008 after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses.
There are 41 delegates up for grabs in Iowa, and 14% of the votes still need to be reported.
It took the Iowa Democratic Party nearly an entire day to report even a single vote from the caucuses because of what party officials said was a coding error and vote inconsistencies being reported on a mobile app specially designed for vote counting throughout the rural state.
Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price called the confusion "unacceptable" and apologized for the vote-counting fiasco.
The preliminary results underscored a sharp ideological divide within the Democratic Party as it seeks a candidate strong enough to unseat Trump.
The youthful Buttigieg, 38, represents the moderate wing of the Democratic Party and is the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate. Sanders, 78, is a self-declared democratic socialist who endorses universal medical coverage while eliminating private insurance. Buttigieg backs government-run health insurance while letting people keep their private coverage.
Sanders would provide all students with free four-year college education and cancel outstanding student debt. Buttigieg would limit free college to low-income families while looking for other ways to reduce debt.
But both support the "Green New Deal" to combat global warming, favor decriminalizing illegal immigration, vow to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, and favor bringing home U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
It took the Iowa Democratic Party nearly an entire day to report even a single vote because of what party officials say was a coding error and vote inconsistencies being reported on a mobile app specially designed for vote counting throughout the rural state.
Iowa Democratic Party chairman Troy Price calls the confusion "unacceptable" and apologized for the vote counting fiasco.
Price said the party put off reporting any results all night and most of the day Tuesday out of an abundance of caution and to protect the integrity of the caucuses.
He assured all caucus voters, the candidates and their supporters that the data is accurate because there is documentation of every choice at every precinct. Price promised a thorough and independent review of why the app failed.
Monday's caucuses bring questions whether the rural state can continue to be relied on to be the first state in the nation to officially choose presidential candidates. Iowa's population is 91% white and some Democratic analysts say the state hardly reflects the national Democratic base, which includes a large percentage of minorities.
But the state's three leading Republicans, Senators Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst and Governor Kim Reynolds, defended Iowa's role in picking presidential nominees for both Democrats and Republicans. They say they are confident "that every last vote will be counted and every last voice heard" in the opposition party's contest.
Buttigieg told backers in New Hampshire that although the final results in Iowa are uncertain, what is known so far is an "astonishing victory" for a campaign that started last year with a four-man exploratory committee working for an obscure mayor of a mid-size city.
Sanders, however, is a political veteran who became a familiar name through his close but ultimately unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
The Iowa results so far are a huge disappointment to Biden, who led in nearly every Democratic voter poll even before he declared his candidacy. But if there is any good news for Biden, others in the past have bounced back from mediocre showings in Iowa to win the party's nomination.
With the full Iowa results unknown, the top Democrats immediately turned their attention to the rural northeastern state of New Hampshire, where a party presidential primary is set for Feb. 11. New Hampshire is next in a long string of state contests set to culminate in the party's selection in July at its national convention of a nominee to face Republican President Donald Trump in November.
Trump, while winning the Iowa Republican caucus vote, gloated about the disarray in the Iowa Democratic vote counting, mocking it as "an unmitigated disaster."
"The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is 'Trump,'" he boasted.
He claimed that the vote-counting fiasco was "not the fault of Iowa, it is the Do Nothing Democrats fault. As long as I am President, Iowa will stay where it is. Important tradition!" to hold the first presidential nominating contest.
WATCH: Final results ahead
The Iowa Democratic outcome is important for the Democratic challengers seeking to make Trump a one-term president, as they seek to gain momentum for the contests that follow.
But the absence of an outcome Monday night deprived all of them a chance to tout a victory or high finish on national television as evidence of their standing to take on Trump nine months from now.
"The history of the caucuses is that the candidate that does better than expected is often the one that gets attention and a real boost in votes in later states. But, of course, if we don't know how they did, we don't know who did better than expected and who did worse than expected," said David Redlawsk, professor of political science at the University of Delaware. "So in that sense, New Hampshire is only eight days away, even if we get some results from Iowa, they may be eclipsed very quickly."