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Hello From Iowa: Three Things You Should Know About Monday’s Caucus (Updated)

Monday’s Iowa caucus marked the first votes of the primary season, signaling that the race for the White House is truly underway.

Monday’s Iowa caucus marked the first votes of the primary season, signaling that the race for the White House is truly underway. ABC News/YouTube.com

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article included reference to an unverified claim about vote counts in one Iowa precinct originally posted on C-Span by an “anonymous user” and reported elsewhere in the press. We do not consider the claim to be credible and have removed the reference to it in this piece. We deeply regret this error and are taking steps to prevent further such errors in the future.

Monday’s Iowa caucus marked the first votes of the primary season, signaling that the race for the White House is truly underway.

The night brought its fair share of surprises, including a too-close to call showing from the Democrats, the dropouts of several candidates, and the allocation of delegates, who will help decide the party’s nominee for president, quite literally left up to a coin toss.

Here are the night’s need-to-know details:

In Some Precincts, the Difference Between a Clinton and Sanders Win Was Literally a Coin Toss

The allocation of some Democratic delegates was quite literally left up to a coin toss in many Iowa caucus locations in an otherwise extremely tight race between Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is taken into account.

By the end of Monday night, Democratic presidential rivals Clinton and Sanders found themselves in a virtual tie with caucus results too close to call. Although Clinton has now been declared the winner, a statement from the Iowa Democratic Party called the race historically close, noting that some outstanding results remained to be accounted for last night, prolonging the final tally:

The results tonight are the closest in Iowa Democratic caucus history. Hillary Clinton has been awarded 700.59 state delegate equivalents, Bernie Sanders has been awarded 696.82 state delegate equivalents, Martin O’Malley has been awarded 7.61 state delegate equivalents and uncommitted has been awarded .46 state delegate equivalents.

As the Des Moines Register reported, several precincts left the final decision on delegate allocation up to a coin toss. There were at least six instances where, under the advisement of party leaders, Democrats decided winners in disputed cases based on flipping a coin—and Clinton was the winner each time. The coin toss is a longstanding method of deciding ties in the Iowa caucuses.

Ted Cruz’s Pandering to Evangelicals Paid Off Big

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has spent months building up his repertoire of ultra-conservative talking points and campaign promises, and Monday night it finally paid off, as the presidential candidate clinched a Republican victory in Iowa.

Cruz took home nearly 28 percent of the night’s votes, Donald Trump came in second with 24 percent, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) ranked third with 23 percent.

The Wall Street Journal attributed Cruz’s win in no small part to a “surge of evangelical Christians, along with support from the Republican Party’s most conservative voters,” no doubt stirred up by his extreme viewpoints.

“Mr. Cruz built his campaign on opposition to abortion, gay marriage and compromise by Republican leaders in Congress. That message produced a distinct uptick in evangelicals and other social conservatives attending Monday’s caucuses,” the Journal explained, noting that evangelical Christians made up 64 percent of GOP caucus attendees, up from 57 percent in 2007.

Cruz has spent months courting these voters, seizing on every opportunity that came his way to demonstrate his extreme opposition to abortion and LGBTQ equality.

Last week, Cruz announced the creation of an anti-choice coalition called “Pro-Lifers for Cruz,” tapping noted extremists such as Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins to help lead the group.  

Cruz’s affiliation with these extremists followed months of endorsements from similarly notorious figures and organizations, including the anti-marriage equality organization National Organization for Marriage and Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, who recently called same-sex marriage “evil” during a Cruz rally.

We Finally Say Goodbye to O’Malley and Huckabee

Only shortly after he said “Hello,” Mike Huckabee decided to say goodbye to his hopes of winning the White House in 2016, bowing out of the presidential race as the results showed him toward the bottom of the pack on caucus night.

The former Arkansas governor announced the suspension of his campaign in a Monday night tweet thanking his supporters. Although he will no longer have the benefit of the national campaign spotlight, representatives of Huckabee’s campaign promised he would continue to address the issues he ran on.

“He is going to continue to push for the issues he believes, but right now this is about thanking his staff and supporters and being with his friends and families and see what doors will open next,” Huckabee spokesman Hogan Gidley said, according to CNN.

Despite his consistent anti-choice rhetoric, Huckabee failed to build the same following in the 2016 race that helped him win the Republican Iowa caucus in 2008, as Cruz captured the key evangelical voting bloc instead.  

But that wasn’t for lack of trying. Huckabee used the campaign trail to tout his stringently anti-choice platform, going as far as to suggest that should he be elected president, he may use federal troops to stop abortion. The former presidential candidate also was a vocal proponent of using fetal “personhood” measures in order to outlaw abortion in the United States.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley also decided to formally suspend his campaign amid disappointing caucus-night results, which earned him less than 1 percent of the votes.

“I want to thank everyone who came out to our events, and lent me their ear. Everyone who went out to caucus for me tonight, and lent me their voice. I give you my deepest gratitude,” O’Malley wrote in an email to supporters announcing the end of his campaign. “Together we all stood up for working people, for new Americans, for the future of the Earth and the safety of our children. We put these issues at the front of our party’s agenda—these are the issues that serve the best interests of our nation.”

O’Malley’s decision to end his White House run comes as news has broken that his campaign was struggling to remain afloat financially: His campaign’s latest Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings revealed he had taken out a loan to finance his run and still was unable to pay many of his staffers.

The former Maryland governor’s presidential platform had included calling for universal access to reproductive health care, instituting federal paid family leave, and providing a “living wage” by raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.