Voting polls do not always tell the whole story. As of Monday morning business mogul Donald trump was expected to win the Republican Iowa caucus primaries by a margin of more than 5 percent of the vote. However, following the voting late Monday night, victory went to his closest competitor US Senator Ted Cruz.
Cruz ousted Trump by a similar margin to the one expected for Trump, garnering 28 percent of the vote to Trump’s 24. Other candidates who were expected to fall far behind the two front runners caught up in the end. Notably, Marco Rubio, a U.S. Senator from Florida, long thought to be the third most likely candidate, finished off with 23 percent of the vote. This placed him only one percentage point behind Trump and made Rubio the leader among establishment Republican candidates.
According to the report by MSNBC Cruz, a conservative lawmaker from Texas, ousted the billionaire and said “God bless the great state of Iowa. Tonight is a victory for the grass roots. Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa and all across this great nation. Iowa has sent notice that the Republican nominee and the next president of the United States will not be chosen by the media; will not be chosen by the Washington establishment; will not be chosen by the lobbyists.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was expected to win Iowa easily, was engaged in a dead heat as polls, closed having received only 49.8 percent of the vote while Senator Bernie Sanders held 49.6 percent of the vote. The numbers reflect 95 percent of the polling stations reporting in. The margin is too close to predict a certain result.
Another Democratic candidate, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, had trouble gaining any traction in the Democratic race. O’Malley planned to suspend his campaign at 9:30 p.m. CST (0330 GMT), according to a Democrat with knowledge of his plans.
One of the established names on the Republican side also chose to suspend his campaign following the vote. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee reportedly said that he was suspending his campaign for the Republican party nomination. Huckabee had won the Iowa caucus in 2008.
