Near Tie Between Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders in Iowa

Tom Steyer spent nearly $17 million on television ads in Iowa but emerged from the caucuses with less than 1 percent of the state delegate count. What happened?

This was one of the first questions of Mr. Steyer’s hourlong CNN town hall, and his response was the first in a series of attacks on Pete Buttigieg, who is virtually tied with Bernie Sanders at the top of the Iowa caucus results. Mr. Steyer directed his aim at Mr. Buttigieg’s lack of support among black voters nationally.

“Whoever is going to be the Democratic nominee is going to have to be able to show that they can win in diverse states,” Mr. Steyer said, citing his stronger poll numbers in Nevada and South Carolina. “There are people who are struggling to do that. Like Pete Buttigieg.”

In response to the next question — about whether Democrats really wanted to nominate someone who, like Mr. Steyer, has no government experience — Mr. Steyer said he had three decades of business experience and argued that Mr. Trump would “chew up and spit out” an opponent who had only a couple years of such experience. “Like Pete Buttigieg.”

He seemed to be mentioning Mr. Buttigieg a lot, the moderator, Dana Bash, noted. Was he saying the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., was too weak to take on Mr. Trump?

“In terms of the economy, I have literally three decades of private-sector experience,” Mr. Steyer responded. “You’re not going to be able to get by with a couple of years at McKinsey if you’re going to take on this president on the debate stage.”

Credit…Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

A new batch of results has almost eliminated Pete Buttigieg’s narrow lead over Bernie Sanders.

With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Buttigieg now has 550 state delegate equivalents to 547 for Mr. Sanders, a difference of one-tenth of a percentage point. Before this latest update, the margin had been seven-tenths of a percentage point.

The overall order is unchanged: Elizabeth Warren remains in third place, with 381 state delegate equivalents, followed by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in fourth and Amy Klobuchar in fifth.

Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The businessman and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who is running a self-proclaimed Silicon Valley campaign, took direct aim at one of tech’s biggest behemoths during his CNN town hall late Wednesday, calling on Facebook to police the truthfulness of political ads on its platform.

Mr. Yang, who often seeks to avoid leveling sharp criticism of other candidates, Trump supporters and humanity as a whole, has previously argued that the social media company should do as much. But during an hour of questions and answers that was often filled with levity, his forceful condemnation of both Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, stood out.

“We need to make Facebook own up to its responsibility as a mature company and get away from this total cop out that they’re like, ‘we’re not a publisher, and we’re a platform,’” Mr. Yang said of Facebook. “Are you kidding me? You’re the biggest publisher in the world today and you need to start acting like it.”

Asked by moderator Don Lemon what he would tell Mr. Zuckerberg if he was watching, Mr. Yang was blunt: “Mark, your company is contributing to the disintegration of our democracy. If you’re an American and a patriot, and you care about the country your kids will inherit, then you need to have Facebook step up.”

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

As he did Monday night before any results were announced, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., again declared himself the Iowa caucus winner during a conference call with supporters Wednesday night.

“You made that historic win happen,” he said of the Iowa result, though news organizations have not called a winner. “Now because of what we were able to do there, we’re in position to arrive in New Hampshire as the momentum candidate in this race.”

Mr. Buttigieg holds a narrow lead over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in state delegates won, according to partial results from the Iowa Democratic Party.

Mr. Buttigieg, whose campaign plowed much of its money into a final Iowa push, made several pleas to supporters to contribute more cash ahead of New Hampshire’s Tuesday primary.

“We need a surge in financial support right now in order to bring us to that finish line in New Hampshire,” he said.

Later in the call Mr. Buttigieg pronounced himself pleased with the Iowa results that have been made available.

“We are thrilled with the position we’re in — there is no campaign I’d trade places with,” he said. “Each day our campaign is making decisions about how to guide our resources and do everything we can to have a big night in New Hampshire, move on to Nevada, South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states beyond.”

Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, fresh from an Iowa finish that was a step behind the race’s two leaders, changed little of her go-to rhetoric during a CNN town hall event Wednesday in New Hampshire, where she stressed that she remained the best candidate to rid Washington of corruption.

In questions about a range of topics, including appealing to independents, fixing the immigration system and curbing the opioid crisis, Ms. Warren flowed through personal stories and policy initiatives — a comfort zone from her campaign events, which rely heavily on audience questions.

When asked whether the men in the 2020 race were better positioned because of their gender, Ms. Warren said, “I believe they think so, but they’d be wrong.”

“In 2020, we can and should have a woman president,” she added.

The Iowa Democratic Party released another batch of results Wednesday night, and once again the leaders were unchanged: Pete Buttigieg held a narrow lead of state delegate equivalents over Bernie Sanders, with Elizabeth Warren in third and Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Amy Klobuchar further behind.

See the latest results here.

Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times

KEENE, N.H. — Because of its open primary and large share of independent voters, Andrew Yang has come to see New Hampshire as “the most natural home” for his campaign.

And now, with less than a week to go before the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Yang is ramping up his pitch to appeal directly to those who voted for President Trump in 2016 and are now looking for a Democrat to woo them.

Mr. Yang stayed on message in his second day of campaigning in New Hampshire this week — a place where his campaign both hopes and needs to overperform. But he dwelled longer than usual on an argument he has been making for months: That he is the Democrat most likely to beat Mr. Trump because Trump voters will support him.

On Wednesday, Mr. Yang used his stump speech at one event and a question-and-answer session here in Keene to press the issue in front of New Hampshire voters, some of whom pride themselves on being political mavericks.

He cited betting markets that, he said, showed he was the “heaviest favorite” in a head-to-head match up with Mr. Trump and surveys that he said showed relatively strong support for him over Mr. Trump among college Republicans and New Hampshire Trump voters.

And he offered another piece of less empirical (and perhaps less convincing) evidence.

“I’m the only candidate in the field he hasn’t tweeted a word about,” Mr. Yang said of Mr. Trump. “No. 1 because he knows I’m better at the internet than he is. And No. 2, because his most potent attack lines — ‘you’re a corrupt D.C. politician’ — don’t work on me.”

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Wednesday that his performance in the Iowa caucuses had fallen short of his expectations, though he played down the significance of the contest in the overall nominating process.

“I expected to do better, and I expected that our organization would perform better,” Mr. Biden said at a town hall event on CNN. “But the fact is, I’m happy to be here in New Hampshire.”

Mr. Biden prefaced his comments by saying, “Look, let’s put this in perspective.” He noted that Iowa awards just a tiny fraction of the total number of delegates needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Partial results show Mr. Biden in fourth place in Iowa, trailing former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., as well as Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Biden told a crowd in New Hampshire that the results in Iowa had been a “gut punch,” and he promised to make a comeback. “This isn’t the first time in my life I’ve been knocked down,” he said.

Credit…Cameron Pollack for The New York Times

MANCHESTER, N.H. — For over a year, the airwaves in Iowa were inundated by $70 million of political ads, as most of the top-tier campaigns went all-in on the first caucus state with substantially less attention paid to New Hampshire.

But the airwaves in New Hampshire have seen plenty of the candidates; more than $40 million worth, to be precise, according to the tracking firm Advertising Analytics.

The biggest spender, unsurprisingly, is Tom Steyer, the billionaire businessman who has spent more than $144 million in his bid for the presidency. (The other billionaire in the race, Michael R. Bloomberg, is not campaigning in the state.)

In New Hampshire markets, Mr. Steyer has spent more than $17 million. The next closest advertisers are Senator Bernie Sanders, who has spent $4.8 million in New Hampshire, and Andrew Yang, who has spent about $3 million on ads in the state.

But looking ahead at future reservations can reveal how campaigns are faring financially after the always expensive Iowa caucuses, and who is setting up for a final push in New Hampshire.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Steyer is also leading the pack, with roughly $800,000 in reservations over the next six days. Close behind him are two super PACs, Vote Vets, which has endorsed Pete Buttigieg, and Unite the Country, which was formed to support Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Unite the Country has more than $720,000 in reservations, giving Mr. Biden some sorely needed air cover in the state. The former vice president has spent only $125,000 in New Hampshire on broadcast ads, by far the lowest of the top candidates.

The tensions surrounding the Democratic presidential race bubbled up at the South Carolina State House today after a state senator suggested that one of his colleagues had sold out to Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire.

The state senator, Dick Harpootlian, made the accusation after reports that Mr. Steyer’s campaign had paid Jerry Govan, a state representative and the chairman of the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, more than $40,000 for “community building” following Mr. Govan’s decision in September to endorse Mr. Steyer, whose campaign is largely self-funded.

“He told me he was with Joe Biden until Mr. Moneybags showed up,” Mr. Harpootlian said on Twitter, linking to an article by The Post and Courier about the payments. “This is what happens when billionaires get involved, whether its Donald Trump or Tom Steyer. They just buy things. They don’t have to persuade anybody, they just buy them.”

His statement did not sit right with members of the black caucus, who held an impromptu news conference denouncing it and demanding that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign also condemn it.

Mr. Harpootlian is a donor and avid supporter of Mr. Biden who campaigned door-to-door for the former vice president in Iowa.

Mr. Steyer has gained in polls in South Carolina — where Mr. Biden remains the front-runner — by dominating advertising as well as by hiring black vendors and staff members and appearing in rural outposts. The endorsement by Mr. Govan was viewed as a coup for the Steyer campaign.

Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times

The Democratic presidential candidates have been responding this afternoon to the thing they all knew was coming: the Senate’s acquittal of President Trump. And they all said what was, essentially, the only thing they could say: “Voters, please do what the Senate didn’t.”

“We cannot wait for history to render its verdict — that is our job,” former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York said in a statement. “We must do in November what all but one of the Senate Republicans did not have the courage to do: vote to remove a lawless, reckless president and turn the page on this dark chapter in the life of our country.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts urged voters who oppose Mr. Trump not to give up.

And the former hedge-fund executive Tom Steyer took a clear, if unnamed, jab at former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has leaned heavily on the idea that he is uniquely capable of restoring bipartisanship to American politics.

Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times

MILFORD, N.H. — Andrew Yang’s stump speech has long been stuffed with jokes: about that one time his in-laws were proud of him, about speaking at his high school and discovering that the current students were not big fans of the place, and about “robot-butter trucks.”

On Wednesday, just two days after a caucus counting debacle in Iowa, Mr. Yang added a new laugh line.

“You all are going make a historic vote on Feb. 11,” he said here in New Hampshire. “And you know what’s equally as exciting? We’re going to know what that vote is on Feb. 11!”

In a gaggle with reporters after his event here, he reiterated that the country could use a tech-savvy leader like himself. And while he stopped short of proposing federal involvement in state elections and caucuses, he said: “There are many, many organizations and resources throughout the country that would have been thrilled to have been involved with the Iowa process and make sure that what happened on Monday night did not happen.”

“Right now, we’re putting some of these processes in the hands of individuals that don’t have technology as a core competence or an area of expertise,” he said. “And as a result we’re putting Americans in a position where they actually are questioning the integrity of our system, and it doesn’t need to be this way.”

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., who appears headed toward a first- or second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses based on partial results, is taking a break from his victory lap to raise money.

According to his public schedule, he held a fund-raiser in Summit, N.J., Wednesday afternoon and was planning two in New York City: one Wednesday night and one Thursday morning. Next week, after the New Hampshire primary, he will head to California for several more fund-raisers.

Mr. Buttigieg reported $14.5 million cash on hand at the end of 2019. His campaign’s plan was to spend down those reserves in Iowa and New Hampshire, with the expectation that strong finishes in the first two states would lead to a fund-raising boom while weak showings would lead to him ending his campaign.

Some of his opponents in the Democratic primary have criticized his fund-raisers. Senator Elizabeth Warren said at a debate in December, “Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States,” referring to one particular event Mr. Buttigieg had held in California. And several candidates, including Ms. Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, have forsworn high-dollar fund-raisers altogether.

Mr. Buttigieg has said that shunning wealthy donors amounts to trying to defeat President Trump “with one hand tied behind our back,” though Mr. Sanders has outraised him over the course of the campaign.

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Republican-controlled Senate voted Wednesday to acquit President Trump of charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress to aid his own re-election.

The four Democratic senators running for president — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bennet — joined the rest of their Democratic colleagues in voting to convict him.

Those candidates will now head back to New Hampshire and resume their campaigning.

For the second time on Wednesday, the Iowa Democratic Party has released additional results from Monday’s presidential caucuses. The new numbers will appear on our results page shortly.

The party has now posted results from 85 percent of the state’s more than 1,600 precincts. Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., has retained the lead in state delegate equivalents that he’s held since the first batch of results was released Tuesday, with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont trailing in a close second.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts remains in third place and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is in fourth. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is fifth.

The latest release is the fourth set of results the party has made public since Tuesday afternoon. Party officials have not indicated how long it will take them to finish tabulating caucus results.

Iowa Democratic Party staff members in Des Moines have been releasing batches of results as they examine records of handwritten results worksheets from more than 1,600 precincts and check them against the data in the party’s computers.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The infamous Iowa caucus delays may soon have a compatriot in Texas.

Officials with the Texas Democratic Party said that the secretary of state told them that some presidential primary results could be delayed on election night, set for March 3, or Super Tuesday.

The party officials said they learned in a meeting in January that a complex formula used to award delegates based on votes in State Senate districts could delay the delegate tally.

The meeting was first reported by the Texas Tribune.

With 228 delegates to award, any delay in Texas could create uncertainty on the most critical night of the presidential primary. The Texas secretary of state’s office did not respond to emails and voice messages requesting comment.

Manny Garcia, the executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, called the potential for delays “unacceptable.”

“Texans deserve to know who won their election,” Mr. Garcia said. “If, in fact, the secretary of state refuses to report all of the election results, including the presidential preference by senate district, it is a violation of the public trust and fails Texans.”

He said that the state party was exploring other reporting options, should the secretary of state’s office not report the full results on the night of Super Tuesday.

“If we can confidently acquire and report in a timely manner election results by every category necessary to award delegate counts then we will do so,” Mr. Garcia said. “Transparency is our top priority. We will make further comments on our plans in the near future.”

WASHINGTON — The Iowa Democratic Party plans to release more caucus results Wednesday afternoon, an aide said.

The tabulation delays, which have now spanned more than 43 hours since caucusing began Monday night, stem from a clunky counting process put in place when the smartphone app that officials planned to use either failed or was not used by volunteer precinct organizers.

Now, Iowa Democratic Party staff members in Des Moines are examining records of handwritten results work sheets from more than 1,600 precincts and checking the numbers against the data that has been entered into the party’s computers.

That process “obviously takes time,” said the state party aide, who declined to be identified.

Credit…T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado has staked his presidential campaign on a strong showing in New Hampshire, which several of his higher-polling competitors are barnstorming throughout the day.

But in the sort of striking split-screen moment that has defined the last couple of weeks, he was in Washington, giving a blistering speech on the Senate floor before the final vote on the impeachment charges against President Trump.

At times visibly angry, Mr. Bennet spoke of his mother’s family dying in the Holocaust, of slavery and of the women’s suffrage movement. He said that ordinary people had long stood up to demand that the United States live up to the Constitution’s promises, and argued that today’s Senate was failing to meet the same demand.

“Nobody is asking us, thank God, to end human slavery. Nobody’s asking us to fight for 50 years for the self-evident proposition that women should have the right to vote,” Mr. Bennet said. “We’re not marching in Selma, being beaten for the self-evident proposition that all people are created equally. Nobody’s asking us to climb the Cliffs of Dover to fight for freedom in a war that had never touched our shores. We’re being asked to save our democracy, and we’re going to fail that test today in the United States Senate.”

And then he concluded, hinting unmistakably at the place he would rather be.

“My prayer for our country,” he said, “is that the American people won’t fail that test. And I’m optimistic that we won’t.”

Credit…

Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Senator Elizabeth Warren held a town-hall-style event at Nashua Community College in Nashua, N.H.

The Iowa Democratic Party has released another batch of results from Monday’s caucuses, but the new data did little to change the positioning of the top candidates.

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., is still the leader in state delegate equivalents, with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont trailing in a close second. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is third and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. remains in fourth place.

Mr. Buttigieg has now retained his lead through three batches of results that have been released by the state party.

Results are now in from 75 percent of the more than 1,600 caucus precincts. Late Tuesday night, data from 71 percent of precincts was available. Party officials have not indicated how long it will take them to finish tabulating all of the caucus results.

The precincts left to report results are scattered throughout the state, in 87 of Iowa’s 99 counties. Many of them are in Polk County, the state’s largest county, where just two-thirds of the 177 precincts are accounted for.

Sean Bagniewski, the Democratic chairman in Polk County, said he had delivered all of his county’s precinct-level results to the state party headquarters by 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and had no explanation for why they had not yet been counted.

Mr. Bagniewski said state party officials have not sought additional information from him about the Polk County data.

Tom Courtney was taken aback on Wednesday to learn the Iowa Democratic Party still had not yet reported results from the precinct in Burlington where he was caucus chairman.

“I really don’t get it,” he said. “I notified them several times. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Mr. Courtney, a former Iowa state senator, had tried to call in the results of the 121 people in his precinct Monday, only to encounter the interminable hold times that plagued Democratic volunteer precinct leaders statewide. After hours of being unable to get through to party headquarters in Des Moines, Mr. Courtney gave up and went to bed.

His confusion and the multiple snafus after he reported Monday night’s results on several occasions called to mind a rickety third-world democracy, not the state whose vaunted caucuses are the leadoff contest in choosing a presidential nominee.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he recounted. “At 3 in the morning I emailed everything to the guy I was trying to call, then I texted it.”

On Tuesday, he said, he got a call from state headquarters that they hadn’t seen his results. “I gave them to him over the phone, again,” Mr. Courtney said.

Then someone from the state Democratic Party drove the 2 hours, 40 minutes from Des Moines to Burlington to pick up all the paperwork from each of the 16 precincts in Des Moines County, which were in Mr. Courtney’s possession as the county Democratic chairman.

On Wednesday when a reporter informed him that the results for his precinct, Des Moines 5, still hadn’t appeared on The New York Times results page, he was deeply frustrated.

“That’s the damnedest thing,” he said. “I really just don’t get it. I’m afraid we may be looking at the last first-in-the-nation for our caucus. I hate that.”

Credit…Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Jon Ralston, editor of The Nevada Independent and a respected chronicler of Silver State politics, will be one of five moderators at the Democratic debate in Las Vegas on Feb. 19, NBC said on Wednesday.

Mr. Ralston will be joined by the anchor Lester Holt, the “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, the network’s chief White House correspondent Hallie Jackson, and Vanessa Hauc, a Telemundo correspondent, NBC said.

The two-hour debate is set to air on MSNBC and NBC broadcast stations three days ahead of the Nevada caucuses. The debate will also air in Spanish on a pay-TV Spanish channel, Universo, and stream online.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, may be onstage because of a change in the party’s qualifying rules. If he does, it would mark the billionaire’s first opportunity to clash onstage with his Democratic rivals.

The deadline for candidates to qualify for the Nevada debate is 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 18, less than 24 hours before the debate begins. Another Democratic debate will be held this Friday in New Hampshire.

The moderating stint at the Nevada debate will be a repeat performance this cycle for Mr. Holt and Mr. Todd, who helped moderate the first Democratic primary debate in June, when 20 candidates qualified.

Candidates will be given 75 seconds for answers and 45 seconds for follow-up responses, NBC said.

Credit…Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

Supporters of President Trump gathered on Wednesday outside the Youth Climate and Clean Energy Town Hall in Concord, N.H.

Credit…Meg Kinnard/Associated Press

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The presidential campaign of Tom Steyer paid the chairman of the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus more than $42,000 in a little more than a month to serve as a senior adviser to the campaign, nearly triple what his campaign manager earns per month, according to campaign finance records.

Jerry Govan, a state representative, endorsed Mr. Steyer’s campaign back in September and immediately signed on to be a senior adviser. The endorsement was a valuable achievement for Mr. Steyer, who has been increasingly focused on winning South Carolina and has been paying black vendors, hiring black staff members and appearing in rural outposts.

After Mr. Govan’s endorsement, multiple other influential black leaders and state officials have announced their support for Mr. Steyer. The payments appear in Federal Election Commission records under the name of “The Govan Agency LLC” and are for “community building services.” His campaign also paid the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus $7,500 for “Event Sponsorship,” which Mr. Govan heads.

Mr. Steyer’s campaign released a statement that said Mr. Govan’s lump payments in December were actually for months of work.

“Representative Govan was announced as a senior adviser to the campaign in September 2019,” Doug Rubin, a spokesman for Mr. Steyer’s campaign, said in the statement. “As his role as a senior adviser, the campaign agreed to compensate him in the amount of $10,000 per month plus reimbursable expenses to execute on a specific scope of work.

The statement went on to say, “The $43,000 amount is the amount Representative Govan was paid from September-December plus reimbursable expenses. Representative Govan’s compensation is consistent with the salaries of other members of the team in South Carolina.”

Combined with an aggressive advertising campaign in the state (at more than $14 million, Mr. Steyer occupies 70 percent of the political ads in South Carolina), Mr. Steyer’s prospects have steadily rose in South Carolina, and a recent poll found him at 17 percent, good enough for third place behind Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president, and Senator Bernie Sanders. The poll was a 12-point jump for Mr. Steyer from December to January.

Correction: Feb. 5, 2020

An earlier version of this article misstated the month that South Carolina State Representative Jerry Govan started working for the Tom Steyer campaign. He started in September, not October.

Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

SOMERSWORTH, N.H. — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday unleashed direct and explicit attacks on Pete Buttigieg and Senator Bernie Sanders, both of whom he is badly trailing in partial Iowa caucus results, arguing that Mr. Sanders would drag down other Democratic candidates and chiding Mr. Buttigieg for playing down the accomplishments of the Obama administration.

Mr. Biden, the former vice president, emphasized the need to choose a Democratic presidential nominee who will help down-ballot candidates. He noted that Mr. Sanders, of Vermont, describes himself as a democratic socialist and said that every Democratic candidate running in November “will have to carry the label Senator Sanders has chose for himself.”

“Donald Trump is desperate to pin the socialist label of socialist, socialist, socialist, on our party,” Mr. Biden said. “We can’t let him do that.”

Then he moved on to Mr. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., telling the crowd that Mr. Buttigieg “calls me part of the old, failed Washington.”

“Is he really saying the Obama-Biden administration was a failure?” Mr. Biden asked. “Pete, just say it out loud.”

Mr. Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate before serving two terms as President Barack Obama’s vice president, proceeded to highlight Mr. Buttigieg’s relative lack of experience.

“I have great respect for Mayor Pete and his service to this nation,” Mr. Biden said. “But I do believe it’s a risk, to be just straight up with you, for this party to nominate someone who’s never held an office higher than mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana.”

SOMERSWORTH, N.H. — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday acknowledged his poor showing in Iowa, promising to make a comeback starting with next week’s primary in New Hampshire.

“I am not going to sugarcoat it,” Mr. Biden told the crowd at an event in Somersworth. “We took a gut punch in Iowa. The whole process took a gut punch. But, look, this isn’t the first time in my life I’ve been knocked down.”

Mr. Biden said people were seeking to “write off this campaign” and had been since he entered the race.

“Well, I got news for them,” Mr. Biden said. “I’m not going anywhere.” He added, “And I’m counting on New Hampshire. We’re going to come back.”

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

DERRY, N.H. — Senator Bernie Sanders began his town hall here in Derry on Wednesday morning on a solemn note.

“Today is a kind of serious and solemn day for the country,” he said, pausing briefly.

“The reason I’m wearing a tie” — unusual for him! — “is I’m going to be on a plane in a few minutes going to Washington, D.C., to vote for the impeachment of President Trump. This is serious business, and something that I have taken seriously.”

As one of four senators competing for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Sanders often found himself in recent weeks in Washington for the impeachment trial instead of on the campaign trail.

To fill their absence, he and the other senators sent out all manner of surrogates to campaign in their place. Mr. Sanders had his wife, Jane Sanders, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Amy Klobuchar had her daughter and an Olympic curling coach. Elizabeth Warren had Julián Castro, a former 2020 candidate, and her dog.

The impeachment trial was unfortunate timing for the senators. But many have taken pains to highlight their patriotic duty. All have said they will vote to convict Mr. Trump.

But in Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Sanders has not been able to resist sounding a bit annoyed.

“Frankly,” he told the modest crowd, “I would have preferred to be campaigning in New Hampshire and Iowa during the period. But an impeachment is a rarity, it is of enormous consequence and it’s something that I have taken seriously as other senatorial candidates have done as well.”

Mr. Sanders will fly to Washington from New Hampshire after his town hall event ends today.

The Iowa Democratic Party will release another tranche of caucus results in the early afternoon hours on Wednesday, a Democratic official said, as officials slowly tabulate what happened in Monday’s first presidential nominating contest.

It’s not known how much of the caucus results will be accounted for in the next disclosure or how many more times the state party will release partial results before complete totals are known.

Two days after the caucuses, Iowa Democrats have released results from 71 percent of the more than 1,600 caucus precincts in the state.

As of now, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., holds a slight lead in the state delegate count over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is third, with former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in fourth and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota fifth.

Credit…Steven Senne/Associated Press

Michael R. Bloomberg on Wednesday nabbed his first endorsement from a governor: Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island.

Ms. Raimondo, a longtime ally of Mr. Bloomberg’s and a former chair of the Democratic Governors Association, called Mr. Bloomberg the right leader to stop President Trump from winning re-election. She appeared alongside Mr. Bloomberg on Wednesday at a campaign stop in Providence. (Rhode Island’s primary is on April 28, though few delegates are at stake.)

Mr. Bloomberg backed Ms. Raimondo’s run for governor in 2014, when she became the first woman elected governor in Rhode Island.

Ms. Raimondo was not always optimistic about Mr. Bloomberg’s chances: Soon after he entered the presidential race late last year, she called his bid a “long shot,” in part because of his billionaire status in a Democratic Party increasingly concerned with inequality. Mr. Bloomberg has already poured more than $200 million from his personal fortune into the campaign and has indicated he may spend hundreds of millions more.

But on Wednesday, Ms. Raimondo said she believed Mr. Bloomberg had the best shot at winning back the White House in November.

“Mike is a problem-solver with a long track record of delivering results, and I’m proud to stand with him today,” she said in a statement. “From fighting gun violence, to addressing climate change, to combating the opioid crisis and more, Mike understands the issues that impact our lives every day. We cannot risk another four years of President Trump’s destructive policies, and I know that Mike is the right leader to take him on.”

Mr. Trump has continued to focus his attacks on Mr. Bloomberg in recent days. On Twitter Wednesday morning, he mocked the results of the Democratic caucus in Iowa, calling it “a complete disaster” and suggesting that Democrats “bring in Mini Mike Bloomberg ASAP.”

Credit…Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

CONCORD, N.H. — Day 2 of the weeklong sprint to the New Hampshire primary began early Wednesday as several of the Democratic presidential candidates, including Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar, discussed climate change and clean energy at a daylong forum here.

Ms. Klobuchar, of Minnesota, kicked off the event at the Bank of New Hampshire Stage. Next was Mr. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who is hanging on to a slight lead over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the partial results released from the Iowa caucuses.

In his address, Mr. Buttigieg — who was confronted by a group of climate activists at a town hall event on Tuesday — called climate change the “global security issue of our time.”

“This is the pivotal moment in whether we’re able to address the problem,” he said, before delivering a brief version of his stump speech. He called for “a sense of common purpose” and argued that climate change is the type of problem that will require Democrats, Republicans and independents to work together to solve.

“If we get this right, this becomes a national problem,” he said. “And the thing about America is America always does better when we have a national problem.”

“Guilt and doom and fear are paralyzing emotions,” he added. “We now need to make sure that when we think of our approach to climate, the main thing that we feel is pride.”

Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts are all also scheduled to speak, as are surrogates for Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

William F. Weld, another former governor of Massachusetts, who has mounted a long-shot challenge to President Trump in the Republican primary, also spoke Wednesday morning.

Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar will leave New Hampshire and zip back to Washington today for the final moments of President Trump’s impeachment trial.

After months of hearings, testimony, arguments and political posturing, all three of them are expected to join their party in voting to remove President Trump from office. (But, barring the surprise of the century, they’ll be outnumbered by Senate Republicans.)

Then, they’ll fly back to New Hampshire, where they are locked in a tight race ahead of next week’s primary. (A fourth Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, is also running for president, and has focused his campaign on New Hampshire, but is mired at the bottom of the polls.)

None flew down to Washington for the State of the Union last night. Mr. Sanders delivered his own response from a rally in Manchester, N.H., calling the speech Mr. Trump’s “very last” address and attacking the president’s economic proposals.

“It is equally as important to discuss what President Trump refused to talk about,” Mr. Sanders said. “In the year 2020, how can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change?”

Delivering a State of the Union response has become something of a tradition for the Vermont senator. Though not selected as the official representative of his party to appear on national TV, he offered his thoughts anyway in 2018 and 2019 as well.

An untested technology, novel reporting requirements, nearly a dozen competitors to tally across 1,600 precincts — what could go wrong? As the Iowa Democratic Party discovered Monday night, nearly everything.

A faulty smartphone app was at the center of a chaotic caucus night in Iowa, but technical glitches were not the only reasons behind a major delay in results from the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential contest.

A day and a half later, we’re still waiting for final results from the Iowa caucuses. But with 71 percent of precincts reporting as of late Tuesday night, Pete Buttigieg held a narrow lead — having earned the most “state delegate equivalents.”

By that count he is edging out Bernie Sanders, who has the lead among so-called first and final alignments — a closer measure of the popular vote. (If you hadn’t heard, the way the Iowa caucuses work is pretty complex.)

Mr. Buttigieg had staked his campaign on a big result in Iowa — and he may have done better than almost anyone expected. He sounded appreciative and fired-up on Tuesday, speaking in Laconia, N.H.: “A campaign that started a year ago with four staff members, no name-recognition, no money, just a big idea — a campaign that some said should have no business even making this attempt — has taken its place at the front of this race,” he told supporters.

Whether he finishes first or second, Mr. Buttigieg will take solid momentum with him into the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. Like Iowa, the Granite State has relatively few nonwhite voters, and its primary is open to Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. That means there’s the potential for more moderate voters to participate who are distressed by President Trump but uninterested in liberal proposals. Still, Mr. Sanders has held a decisive lead in most New Hampshire polls over the past few weeks.

The partial caucus results have Elizabeth Warren in third, seemingly enough to earn her a few delegates at the convention. Joseph R. Biden Jr. appears on track for a distant fourth-place finish — between Warren and Amy Klobuchar, who ranked fifth in the early delegate-equivalent count. That would be a disappointment for him, setting up an urgent need for a strong finish in New Hampshire or Nevada.

Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times

DUBUQUE, Iowa — Troy Price, the head of the Iowa Democratic Party, said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference that it’s a conversation that happens every four years: Does Iowa deserve to hold the first presidential nominating contest?

This time, though, the critique comes after a stunning crackup of the state’s prized caucuses.

Democratic officials who have long contended that Iowa is unrepresentative of voters nationally seized on the chaos of Monday night — partial results were not reported until late Tuesday afternoon — to argue that the state should not hold pride of place, reviving the criticism that its older, majority white population distorts Democrats’ vision of themselves as young and diverse. Read more here.

Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Senator Bernie Sanders responded to President Trump’s State of the Union address with his own speech in Manchester, N.H., on Tuesday night. He challenged Mr. Trump’s claims of a booming economy, saying, “It is only booming for Trump and his billionaire friends.”

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The leading Democratic candidates are beginning the day in New Hampshire, which holds its primary next Tuesday, even as they keep an eye on results from Monday’s caucuses in Iowa.

The four senators running for president — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bennet — are also expected to be in Washington this afternoon for the final votes in President Trump’s impeachment trial, though his acquittal is virtually certain.

And several candidates — Joseph R. Biden Jr., Ms. Warren, Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer — are scheduled to appear separately in hourlong “town halls” on CNN tonight, in which they will take questions from moderators and audience members. Four others will appear Thursday night. Those events will be held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, which is also hosting the next Democratic debate, on Friday night.

Here are the leading candidates’ schedules today:

  • Several candidates are scheduled to appear at a “Youth Climate and Clean Energy Town Hall” in Concord today, including Pete Buttigieg, Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Yang.

  • Mr. Buttigieg has no other public events on his schedule, but has two fund-raisers lined up in New Jersey and New York.

  • Mr. Sanders is holding a town-hall-style event at an opera house in Derry this morning.

  • Ms. Warren is holding a get-out-the-vote event at Nashua Community College in the morning, and has her CNN town hall event in the evening.

  • Mr. Biden has a campaign event in Somersworth today, and his CNN appearance tonight.

  • Mr. Yang is holding events in Concord, Milford and Keene before heading to the CNN set.



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