BuzzFeed News political correspondents Ruby Cramer, McKay Coppins, Evan McMorris-Santoro, and Rosie Gray are reporting from Iowa, along with Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith and U.K. political reporter Jim Waterson.
- The Iowa caucuses have officially begun, marking the first nominating contest of the 2016 presidential campaign.
- Results are expected to begin streaming in around 10 p.m. ET.
- Follow Live Updates from BuzzFeed News here. Follow the returns for the Democrats here and the GOP here.
- Businessman Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz appear to be neck and neck on the GOP side, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are in a dead heat on the Democratic side.
- If you still don't know how the caucuses work, read this. If you are outside the U.S. and still want to know, read this.
Jae C. Hong / AP
Eight years after Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa — and in the process set off a chain reaction of voters shifting from Clinton to the first-term senator — Clinton and her campaign worked to correct any and all mistakes. Though she organized heavily in the state in 2008, this time her campaign emphasized organizing above all. The night before the caucus, the campaign boasted 4,200 volunteers to turn people out to vote — and said her team knocked on 125,000 doors.
Sanders, meanwhile, captured young voters and the populist spirit of those dissatisfied with the political and economic mainstream. After last summer's Feel the Bern tour of liberal cities, the Vermont senator has turned out hundreds and even thousands with relative ease throughout Iowa. His appeal has been much starker than Clinton's — where she promises incremental change through political experience across an array of domestic policy areas, Sanders promises "political revolution."
Should Sanders win, it would represent a staggering upset: This time last year, few people knew who Bernie Sanders, a Vermont senator who refused to label himself a Democrat, even was. But the impact could be short-lived. Although Sanders is winning big time in the polls in New Hampshire, which follows Iowa, Clinton will likely perform significantly better after the voting moves beyond the first two states and into more diverse states like South Carolina (and others in the South) and Nevada.
It looks like something that was unthinkable a year ago may happen: Donald Trump winning the Iowa caucuses. The billionaire has led the polls in the final days, including in the respected Des Moines Register survey. For weeks, it looked like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz would solidly take Iowa — but he appears to have faded a bit down the stretch, under attack from Trump and a series of super PAC ads that questioned how sincere a Christian he really is.
So now it's down to these two men. Trump represents a more populist, radical moderate approach to politics, while Cruz is the kind of candidate who's won Iowa in recent cycles — very conservative socially and economically, a Washington outsider, and endorsed by many of the top evangelical and elected leaders in Iowa.
If Cruz loses, though, the effects will be more significant — and a significant disaster — for him. Much of his candidacy has been staked on winning in Iowa, an early victory meant to position the race as a two-man choice between him and Trump. Winning Iowa was also meant to set him up as a legitimate candidate in South Carolina, as well as many Southern states that vote on March 1. Without Iowa, his candidacy may be completely derailed.
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