Washington: Former secretary of state, senator and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has declared her campaign victorious by a slight margin over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for the lion's share of the Iowa Democratic caucuses on Tuesday morning.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas emerged on top of the twelve-person race for Iowa's 30 GOP delegates.
Both Sanders and Clinton received roughly 50% of the vote each.
Hillary Clinton's struggle to fend off underdog Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, reignited questions about her ability to close the deal with Democratic voters and turned up the pressure on her high-profile White House campaign.
The Democratic presidential front-runner, whose campaign ran off the rails in Iowa in 2008 against Barack Obama, was dealt another setback by winning only by a slim margin on Monday in the Midwestern state that begins the 2016 race for the presidency.
The former secretary of state, Clinton, 68, was pushed to a virtual tie with Sanders, a 74-year-old US senator from Vermont.
The first votes cast in the race for the presidency took place on a cold night in Iowa, where residents are bracing for blizzard conditions. That did not curb robust turnout for the vote in which nearly half of all caucus-goers engaged in the process for the first time, according to exit polls.
Clinton said she was breathing a "big sigh of relief" after the results. She congratulated Sanders and did not declare victory in her remarks.
"It is rare that we have the opportunity we do now to have a real contest of ideas," she said.
"Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state, we had no political organization, we had no money, we had no name recognition, and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America," he said.
Clinton, considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination since entering the race in April and long ahead in Iowa polls. Bernie Sanders, an independent in the US Senate was favored to win the first primary in the cycle on February 9 in New Hampshire.
In her last campaign for the presidency in 2008, Clinton earned third place in these caucuses, behind then-senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards. But Clinton won support this year in regions she lost considerably in her last cycle– both in the cities of Sioux City and Des Moines, as well as in their suburbs.
Democratic Party caucuses in Iowa require voters to cast their ballots publicly and allow for second-round voting if candidates fail to meet pre-set viability thresholds. Supporters of former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley were repeatedly forced to re-vote precinct by precinct for this reason, forcing the candidate to suspend his flagging campaign on Monday night.
In the contentious race for the Republican nomination, Cruz succeeded in topping real estate mogul Donald J. Trump by four percentage points, defying polls that implied a Trump victory up until the day of voting.
Cruz spent over six months building a ground campaign to get out the vote, and won broad support among the state's evangelical Christian voters, in line with past victors in the 2012 and 2008 Iowa GOP caucuses: former senator of Pennsylvania Rick Santorum and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
In his victory speech, Cruz stated that his success was owed to the strength of "grassroots conservatives."
Neither Santorum nor Huckabee proceeded to win a single state in the proceeding weeks, and neither have gained traction this year, as both are running once again for their party's nomination.
Indeed, Huckabee suspended his campaign on Monday night. But Cruz's campaign celebrated the victory as a boost in momentum entering the primaries to come. Trump maintains double-digit leads in polls nationwide, as well as in the next three states to vote: New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. But Marco Rubio, Republican senator from Florida, beat expectations on Monday night, earning nearly as much support as the New York business tycoon.
Trump said of the Iowa results that he was "honored" to come in second and congratulated Republican competitor Cruz.
The candidate– considered a contender for establishment support in the Republican Party– won 23 percent of support in the caucuses, to Trump's 24 percent. Cruz won 28 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
"They said this day would never happen," Rubio told supporters, of his third place finish. Several of his competitors, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Ohio governor John Kasich, remained in New Hampshire throughout the results.
