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[ fast-paced drumming ] >> announcer: "night continues. here now, byron pitts. good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight all eyes on the hawkeye state, home to the much-anticipated iowa caucus. but tonight the unprecedented delay. no projections of a winner yet. the iowa democratic party saying the results are, quote, postponed due to quality checks, adding that they found inconsistencies in the reporting. we now go straight to abc's political director rick klein. rick, what are you learning tonight? >> reporter: byron, this is a complete meltdown of the voting process and of the reporting system. these are caucuses. a little different than regular elections. people gather in these rooms, then those results get tabulated in the rooms and then they get sent back to party headquarters. 1600 of these locations. that's where the problems started. the party had an app it had never used before. that didn't work in all cases. and what happened was some of the information wasn't getting sent or the party was noticing inconsistencies in that information. then some of these precinct people would try to call, call them up. they got busy signals. they weren't able to get through. they were put on hold. the bottom line is even now we have no results in from the iowa democratic party on these first in the nation nominating contests. it has cast a shadow over the kickoff to this election season for democrats. and it's possible that we never really know what the results in iowa -- already the biden campaign is out with a statement saying they may not trust the results, they want to review that. we are delayed essentially indefinitely and whoever wins wa iowa will have a lot of the potential bump taken away from them because of what is a disaster in planning and execution. >> thank you so much. this delay not stopping the candidates stepping forward from the waiting game to rally their supporters. take a listen. >> so we don't know all the results. but we know by the time it's all said and done, iowa, you have shocked the nation. [ cheers and applause ] >> the first state in the country has voted. and today, today marks the beginning of the end for donald trump. >> so it's on to new hampshire. nevada. south carolina. and well beyond. we're in this for the long haul. >> tomorrow donald trump will make a speech about the state of the union. but i have a message for every american. our union is stronger than donald trump. >> we now go to abc's whit johnson who was at the senator bernie sanders watch party. >> reporter: byron, there is plenty of excitement here at bernie sanders headquarters but also some growing anxiety within the campaign itself. with a delay in the results tonight. still the senator did walk out before a loud and passionate crowd here in des moines. he was joined by his wife, jane, his son and his grandkids. and he said to the crowd when those results are announced i have a good feeling that we're going to be doing very, very well. he also got a big report from the crowd when he said the first state in the country has voted, today marks the beginning of the end for donald trump. but for now they're off to new hampshire and feeling good despite not having the results, feeling good about what happened here tonight. byron? >> our thanks to whit. tonight's delays overshadowing what many thought would be a clarifying moment in the democratic party. my co-anchor juju chang has been documenting the final push across the state. >> byron, tonight is the culmination of a year's worth of canvassing iowa on behalf of the candidates and now the voters have spoken. we were on the ground for the frenzied final 72 hours as the candidates ge their final pitch in this crucial kickoff in the race to the white house. the hawkeye state, known for its farms, its pigs, and in case you hadn't heard, its ability to determine the next democratic nominee. >> are you ready for caucus night? >> it all begins in iowa. >> this is our moment. >> this is where all the action is. >> reporter: for over a year democratic presidential hopefuls have canvassed this state, eating anything that could be fried, spending over $71 million on ads. and it's all come down to this. >> welcome to iowa. >> reporter: the iowa caucus. where the battle for who takes on donald trump begins. >> if you don't think a woman can beat donald trump, nancy pelosi does it every single day. >> reporter: it's a fight for the heart and soul of the party. who has the best chance to shape what the party stands for? a moderate like joe biden? >> you don't have time to figure out what your foreign policy is. you don't have time to build relationships. you've got to have them immediately with world leaders. >> reporter: pete buttigieg? >> sometimes you get a message that we've got to choose between either a revolution or the status quo. i think there's another way. and that is to harness the american majority of democrats, yes, but also independents and quite a lot of future former republicans. >> reporter: or the progressives. elizabeth warren. >> we want to save our democracy. we want to save our country. it's going to take big structural change. and i've got a plan for that. >> reporter: and bernie sanders. >> health care is a human right, not a privilege. we will pass a medicare for all single payer program. >> reporter: woo iowans cast their first votes tonight and we're here inside a caucus outside a precinct in des moines. >> you're literally going to caulk with us these people tonight. >> yes. i'm going to ask them why they want my vote. >> reporter: here nominees are selected through a complex caucus system, one of only six states to do so. >> i am truly undecided. why should i join team warren? >> reporter: voters move around the room, some trying to be convinced. eventually joining their preferred candidate's cluster. once everyone has chosen, caucus leaders take count. >> the caucus is under way behind me. whichever candidate doesn't get 15% in the first rally their supporters have to get people to come to their camp or go to someone else's. >> reporter: chad cammond has been caucusing for 20 years. >> if they find out you're undecided you become very popular. you're the pretty girl at the dance. >> you are aggressively undecided. >> yes, i am. >> who are your top five? >> they would be warren, buttigieg, klobuchar, biden, and yang. >> but not sanders? >> not sanders. >> why? >> i love his passion. i love his ideals. but if you want to run as a democrat then you should be a democrat. >> reporter: voters whose candidates get less than 15% become free agents. and in the next phase, round 1 of re-alignment, they can choose to caucus with an already viable candidate, try to attract other free agents to their candidate, or stop caucusing. >> so the sense of community. i like seeing everyone come out. >> reporter: it might be the first state to vote, but some critics say iowa isn't representative of the whole country. when it comes to adults 18 and up iowa is almost 92% white. it can be predictive. since 1976 iowa has picked a presidential nominee nine times. three went on to the presidency. high stakes for all the candidates, who need a strong start here, altogether hosting nearly 2,400 events. >> senator amy klobuchar's the only candidate to visit all 99 counties in the state. >> reporter: our team has been spread out across the state for the past 72 hours as iowa gears up to vote. >> this is no time to take the risk of confronting a fundamentally new challenge by falling back on the familiar. let's have the courage to move forward. >> after we win this thing and then we pass the freedom dividend the rest of the world will look up and say america just passed us? >> it's not a trump rally. >> reporter: we're with former vice president joe biden. >> we can't turn four years of donald trump into ab aberration, historical aberration. he with need you, we need you, we need you. >> in the frenzied final hours vice president biden and his wife jill are here to remind iowa voters of his electability, his strong suit. >> reporter: but even here on the eve of the caucus it's not here to find undecided voters. we met savanna burnham, a freshman at arizona state who flew home to iowa for her first caucus. >> you are undecided. >> i am. >> despite the biden sign. >> despite the biden sign. >> reporter: who's your first choice? >> andrew yang. >> reporter: who have you seen while you've been shopping? >> elizabeth warren, pete buttigieg, and now i'm at biden. >> reporter: so we just left the joe biden event, high energy, packed but small gymnasium, and we're headed to amy klobuchar's super bowl watch party. we caught klobuchar op her campaign bus right after her third stop of the day. >> hello. >> hi, senator. >> how are you? >> reporter: which she juggled just before heading back to d.c. for the impeachment hearings. >> i'm a mom. i can do two things at once. so i just keep going back and forth. we are a real grassroots campaign. i'm someone who gets things done, and i bring the receipts to this race. i am the only one on the debate stages who's consistently led a ticket and won in red and purple areas. >> reporter: along with klobuchar three other presidential candidates are u.s. senators, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren and michael bennet. impeachment throwing a wrench in their campaigning. as soon as the trial went into recess friday evening the senators went right back into campaign mode, high-tailing it back to iowa. >> if anybody listened to the impeachment trial over the last week, you really get the very strong feeling that this is a president and an administration that believes they are above the law. >> it is clear in the constitution, no one is above the law, not even the president of the united states. >> reporter: the field started out historically large. at one point almost 30 people were running to be the democratic nominee. the pool, the most diverse in history. filled with women, people of color, and a gay married man. now the field has whittled down. tonight iowa voters chose between a variety of candidates. next it's on to new hampshire. abc news will host a democratic debate this friday. these seven candidates will be on the stage. not on the stage? former new york city mayor mike bloomberg, who remains a wild card, putting all his resources in for super tuesday, when 14 states will vote. he spent over $300 million in ads and some national polling shows him in several voters' top five. but this is just the beginning of the contest. and if we've learned anything from 2016, what happens next is anyone's guess. >> and when we return, we head back to abc news headquarters in new york and my co-anchor byron pitts, who will break down tonight's results with a powerhouse political team. stay with us. descovy for prep. a once-daily prescription medicine that helps lower the chances of getting hiv through sex. it's not for everyone. descovy for prep has not been studied in people assigned female at birth. talk to your doctor to find out if it's right for you. step up. for health and body. prep up for your one and only love or many loves. for kings, this queen, and you royals in between. for my now. our now. and my future. our future. step up. prep up. descovy is the newest way to prep. descovy does not prevent other sexually transmitted infections, so it's important to use safer sex practices and get tested regularly. you must be hiv-negative to take descovy for prep. so you need to get tested for hiv immediately before and at least every 3 months while taking it. if you think you were exposed to hiv or have flu-like symptoms, tell your doctor right away. they may check to confirm you are still hiv-negative. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a build-up of lactic acid and liver problems. the most common side effect was diarrhea. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking descovy without talking to your doctor. ask your doctor about your risk of hiv and if descovy for prep is right for you. words are loud but actions are louder. step up. prep up. with descovy for prep. get help paying for descovy for prep. learn more at stepupprepup.com ♪ break out the butter loif you've been dreaming aboutr tender wild-caught lobster, dig in to butter-poached, fire-roasted and shrimp & lobster linguini. see? 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rick, my first question to you, what's the latest there in des moines and what do we know about the delay in the results? >> well, we know that the iowa democratic party has at least partial results but they've decided not to release them right now because they're concerned about guaranteeing the integrity of that. in fact, at least one of the campaigns, joe biden's campaign, has warned they don't want to see the results released until they have a chance to review it. we're in a bit of a holding pattern. we also know there are a whole bunch of pieces of the results that have not even made it into headquarters. we're told there are screen shots being texted, in some cases they're actually driving over handwritten notes to get them accepted at headquarters. but we don't know if it's all being compiled. 1600 pieces of information the party has to put together and right now still nothing has come out. >> yvette, i think the technical definition for this is a mess. now, the iowa voting system changes, as you know, after 2016, but made tonight more complicated. yes? what will the fallout be? >> i think this first and second alignment made it a little challenging. you've got a lot more people in this contest. you've got folks who are aligned with one person. people are rallying folks to another person. all about those contingencies can make it much more challenging. and it sounds like they were using a new system which also makes it very challenging. this is a rough start, byron, to the start of the democratic nomination system for us. it is not a good start. just coming out of this dmr poll that always has some inconsistencies. so we didn't even have that poll going into today. which typically is an indicator of who we think is going to be kind of the front-runner coming out of iowa. so it's a real challenge. >> yvette, this is a question for both of you, and rick. there's an argument to be made tonight, one could say, that there was one big winner tonight and perhaps one big loser. the winner, donald trump. the loser, the democratic party. >> yeah, i wouldn't disagree with that. >> i feel like it's a worst nightmare for them, byron. they have to deal with an utter debacle and also pick up the pieces right now and donald trump gets to stir the pot and suggest there is something untoward going on behind the curtains. and as yvette knows there's a lot of people in the democratic party who might believe there are real problems in the democratic establishment. donald trump laughing on the sidelines. >> yvette, what say you? >> you know, a couple things. one, the timing couldn't be worse. donald trump gets to address the nation tomorrow at the state of the union. you best believe this is going to come up. and he's going to talk about the democrats don't have their stuff together, how it's a mess, how it's a debacle. he's going to call people names. he's going to be throwing stuff out. we really don't need that right now. also you've got a lot of people who don't have a trust right now in the system at all. we had interference in 2016. people already don't trust the system. this is our first contest. people are worried that they go out and they cast their vote and it's not going to count. the real challenge was people expected this caucus, which is kind of low tech, to be free of russian interference and there still was issues with it. and going forward we don't know how to recover from that. we need to restore the trust of people in our electoral system, and we're going to have a good election going into november. >> rick, we saw earlier this evening that all the candidates gave victory speeches and they're all getting on planes headed to new hampshire. so who has what heading into new hampshire? >> well, i think no one has momentum for starters. the first contest is essentially going to be new hampshire. even if we get a winner in iowa at some point in the next day or two, and i presume at some point they'll have the vote count, they're going to lose -- they've already lost news cycles with the ongoing debacle. the state of the union looming a night from now, all of that is going to be in the mix, in the mess of the next contest going on in new hampshire. i feel like this exacerbates the problem the democrats have had for a long time in terms of their division. because everyone can walk away as a candidate, believing certain things, be believing certain things, and no clarity whatsoever. iowa, which has had this great winnowing effect knocking out a whole bunch of candidates including candidates of color, ends up telling us probably nothing. >> yvette, final question. there's all this talk for years about all the energy in the democratic party to go after president trump but yet we didn't see a record turnout today in iowa. what does it say to you? >> i don't know. one of the encouraging things i think out of this year's caucus was that we heard there were a number of folks who were first-time caucusgoers or younger caucusgoers in iowa. i think that's great. the fact we're engaging young and new voters in the process. but donald up there expected we'd get people riled up and we'd see this increasing turnout and it didn't happen. i think it's not a good sign we're not seeing large increases, numbers like we saw in 2008 and maybe even 2012. it's a problem. >> yvette simpson, rick klein, thank you both so much. we'll be back with the final note. evere plaque psoriasis. now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are getting clearer, yeah i feel free ♪ ♪ to bare my skin ♪ yeah that's all me. ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin ♪ that's my new plan. ♪ nothing is everything. keep your skin clearer with skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. of those, nearly 9 out of 10 sustained it through 1 year. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ i see nothing in a different way ♪ ♪ and it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪ ♪ nothing is everything skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. before treatment your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms such as fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches or coughs, or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. ♪ nothing is everything ask your dermatologist about skyrizi. ♪ (crowd noise)arella stick! 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[cell phone beeps] hey! [police whistle blows] [horns honking] woman: hey! [bicycle bell rings] turn here. there. excuse me. uh. uh. [indistinct announcement on p.a. system] so, same time next week?