These delays, caused in part by problems with a mobile application created by Shadow Inc. that was used to report voting totals, led to the resignation of Iowa Democratic Party chair Troy Price.

[4] Further controversy resulted from errors and inconsistencies regarding the calculation and reporting of State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs) in several caucus locations.

[5][6][7][8][9] Following a three-day delay in vote reporting, the Iowa Democratic Party declared that Buttigieg had won two more delegates than Sanders.

[21] The Associated Press at that point still refused to call a winner due to too many discrepancies in the precinct vote records, though they acknowledged the official results in their delegate count,[21] and Sanders challenged the results after certification before the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, but there were no media reports about the outcome of that challenge.

Additionally, with Biden defeating incumbent president Donald Trump in the general election, he became the first candidate to do so without finishing in the top 3 in Iowa since the inception of the caucuses in 1972.

[24] In total, 41 pledged national convention delegates are elected for the 2020 Democratic National Convention with their pledged support being determined proportionally to the presidential candidate's total number of SDEs won statewide and in each of the state's four congressional districts; but only for those presidential candidates who manage to qualify by winning at least a 15% share of the SDEs statewide or in the specific district.

[27] The eight superdelegates no longer have the right to cast any decisive vote at the first ballot for determining the Democratic presidential nominee for the presidential election (meaning they can only play a role if allocation of all pledged delegates results in a contested convention); and they are automatically selected independently of the caucus results as unpledged delegates, according to the rules of the Democratic Party.

[28][29] In previous caucuses (most recently in 2016), the reported precinct results were used to compute the expected number of pledged national convention delegates according to the state delegate equivalents for each presidential candidate, meaning that the campaigns after the precinct caucuses still needed to hold onto their computed expected pledged national convention delegates as their support were locked to the candidate only at the final step of the selection process (i.e. at the state convention in June).

[27] This process continues until no non-viable choices remain, and the results are aggregated with congressional districts for the purposes of delegate allocation, but limited to 10% SDEs, regardless of the number of those using the virtual caucus option.

[32] In late August 2019, the DNC ordered both the Iowa and the Nevada Democratic state parties to scrap their plans for "virtual caucuses" due to security concerns.

[33] On September 20, 2019, the DNC conditionally approved a plan for "satellite caucus sites", allowing Iowa Democrats to participate if they are working or going to college outside of the state on February 3, 2020.

[40][41] The poll was later leaked on Twitter, with results confirmed by FiveThirtyEight showing Sanders in the lead with 22%, followed by Warren with 18%, Buttigieg with 16% and Biden with 13%.

[27] On the evening of February 6, after a three-day delay for all precinct votes to be reported, the first preliminary count for statewide results was published by the Iowa Democratic Party, which found that Pete Buttigieg had narrowly won the state delegate equivalent (SDE) count over Bernie Sanders, while Sanders won the popular vote on both the first and final caucus alignments (after supporters of non-viable candidates below the 15% threshold redistributed their support to viable ones).

Due to various journalists identifying a number of potential errors in the reported vote total and calculated state delegate equivalents, and due to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) suggesting a recanvass of the results would be needed,[108][109][110] some major news organizations refused to declare a winner until completion of a possible recanvass or recount.

[114] On February 27, the IDP concluded the official recount, resulting in Buttigieg maintaining a slight edge over Sanders in SDEs.

[121] Former Vice President Joe Biden had a particularly disappointing performance and called it a "gut punch" after winning significantly fewer votes than either Buttigieg or Sanders.

[122] Following the caucuses, Buttigieg became the first openly LGBT candidate to win any pledged national convention delegates towards a major party's presidential nomination.

[126] In a statement released on February 3 at 10:30 pm local time, IDP communications director Mandy McClure said "inconsistencies" had been found in the three sets of results.

[128] Problems encountered included usage and interface failures of an app designed to report final vote tallies for Iowa precinct captains; a backlog of phone calls to the state vote-reporting hotline,[129] including at least one case of a precinct captain being placed on an hour-long hold, only to have the hotline attendant immediately hang up on him when finally answering; confusion about coin flips to decide delegates; the need to use backup paper ballots to verify the results; and discrepancies between backup paper ballots and tallies by precinct captains.

[137] The morning after the caucus, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price issued a clarifying statement, reiterating that he did not believe there was a "cyber security intrusion", and that "data collected via the app was sound".

[138] The Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement that it planned to release partial results at 4:00 pm local time on Tuesday, nearly a full day after caucuses began.

[144] Social media posts claimed shortly after the election that the Buttigieg campaign had influence over the creation of the app, a theory which was supported by the Associated Press.

[151] The app was also criticized for its lack of user-friendliness and openness to potential hacks and data intercepts,[152] though factors such as age of operators may have impacted usability.

The youngest-staffed precinct in the state, Sheldon Ward 2, was headed by 20-year-old Caleb Schreurs who was quoted in The N'west Iowa Review saying: “I had zero problem, [the IDP] were very, very secure with it.

[140][155] This quickly gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories online that were accusing the Democratic Party of corruption and cheating in favor of Buttigieg and other candidates at the expense of Sanders.

In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.

[10] IDP chair Troy Price said that a recount of votes would be required to correct the miscalculations on the handwritten tally sheets from precincts.

[12] According to entrance polls by CNN, the close result was due to splits among key demographic groups: gender, educational attainment and age.

[168] In addition to technical glitches, the meltdown of the caucuses were also fueled by argument over whether Iowa should be first to vote, as many point out the state's overwhelming white population, which doesn't reflect the Democratic Party and the country as a whole.