Pete Buttigieg has narrowly won Iowa's Democratic presidential caucuses after a long delay in releasing the results, reshaping the 2020 race and raising doubts about the future of one-time front-runner Joe Biden.
In the first contest in the race to pick a challenger to Republican President Donald Trump for the November election, the moderate 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, edged out progressive Senator Bernie Sanders 26.2 per cent to 26.1 per cent, the Iowa Democratic Party said.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren finished third with 18 per cent of state-delegate equivalents, the data traditionally used to determine the winner.
Mr Biden limped to a disappointing fourth with 15.8 per cent. US Senator Amy Klobuchar finished fifth with 12.3 per cent.
Former Vice President Joe Biden had a disappointing result, limping in at fourth place. Source: Getty Images
Earlier, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez called for an audit of the Iowa caucuses after an array of problems delayed results from the party's first 2020 presidential nominating contest and created uncertainty about their accuracy.
No winner was declared four days after the caucuses took place in roughly 1,600 locations throughout Iowa on Monday night, and the troubled process has clouded Democrats' initial efforts to find a challenger to Republican President Trump in November.
"Enough is enough. 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," Mr Perez said in a Twitter post.
US President Donald Trump. Source: EPA
Under party rules, a recanvass would involve a hand audit of caucus-site math to recount the worksheets and forms that were submitted via telephone and a mobile app on caucus night.
Party officials initially attributed the delays to a technical problem with a new mobile app, but other concerns have emerged through the week, complicating efforts to release the final tallies.
The Iowa Democratic Party received an "unusually high volume of inbound calls" to its caucus hotline on Monday night from "callers who would hang up immediately after being connected, supporters of President Trump who called to express their displeasure with the Democratic Party, and Iowans looking to confirm details," a party official said on Thursday.
Party staff worked to flag and block repeat callers who appeared to be attempting to jam the lines and interfere with the reporting of caucus results, and the call volume was "highly irregular" compared to previous caucuses, the official said.
Pete Buttigieg greets supporters in New Hampshire. Source: Getty Images
The New York Times has also reported that more than 100 precincts reported results that were inconsistent, had missing data or were not possible under the caucus rules, casting doubt on the count.
