There were 10 Democratic candidates running for president as of press time on Monday, Feb. 10. Seventeen candidates have dropped out over the course of the 2020 election season. The front runners were identified by their popularity among voters and their multiple qualifications for the eight Democratic debates that have already happened. They include former vice president Joe Biden, mayor from Indiana Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and two billionaires: Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg.

On Monday, Feb. 3, people gathered across Iowa in nearly 2,700 locations to caucus for their favorite candidates in the 2020 election. The purpose of a caucus is to see which candidate local political party members have support for. Candidates are deemed viable at a location if their group of supporters includes at least 15 percent of the people attending. One most important things to come out of the caucuses is which candidate earns the highest percentage of votes.

However, the Democratic Party delayed the results and did not release them on the night of Feb. 3. They cited “inconsistencies” as the reason and instead released them at 5 p.m. E.S.T. the following day. This “caucus chaos” sparked fresh calls to end Iowa’s claim to being the first caucus in the nation prior to each presidential election. Supporters of changing that claimed that the honored date should go to a more diverse state: one where the results would represent a larger majority of Americans.

With 62 percent of the results released, Buttigieg came out on top with 26.9 percent of the caucus-goers supporting him. Sanders followed with 25.1 percent, Warren had 18.3 percent and Biden had 15.6 percent.

Buttigieg’s speech on the night of the caucus, before the results were released, also provoked questions, as he seemed to foreshadow his win before the release of results. He told the crowd, “So we don’t know all the results. But we know, by the time it’s all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation.”

Now that the first democratic primary selections in Iowa and New Hampshire are over, attention and campaign efforts have shifted to the Nevada caucus. It will be the next vote to foreshadow the results of the 2020 election, and voters hope it will make even clearer which candidates are favored by Democrats across the U.S.