Iowa caucuses: Check your caucus location, and get live updates from satellite sites
For more than a year, the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign has played out in Iowa. But after roughly 2,500 campaign events, the 2020 caucus cycle is nearly over.
This cycle has been defined by a historically large and diverse field of candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination — a field that, at its peak, boasted 24 candidates.
Today, Iowans will offer their support for the candidate that they think can best lead the United States. The Des Moines Register has more than 60 journalists covering all the news.
Follow along here to see the biggest moments, the buzz and of course, the results. Refresh this page throughout the day to see the latest.
5:52 p.m. - Iowa state auditor Rob Sand not caucusing
Rob Sand, the Democratic Iowa state auditor, will not be caucusing tonight. Instead, he’ll be assisting with an Iowa Democratic Party hotline set up to help answer questions if problems pop up at caucus sites.
Sand is the only Democrat running statewide to defeat a Republican incumbent in 2018 and is considered a rising star in the party whose endorsement was highly sought-after.
He said he’s reminding Democrats that many of them won’t end up with their first choice as the nominee, but they’re all going to have to unite behind whoever that candidate is.
Every time he got close to deciding on a favorite candidate, he kept thinking that the bigger issue is whether Democrats support the nominee in November’s general election.
“It makes a much bigger difference how hard you work for the nominee,” he said.
- Stephen Gruber-Miller
:35 p.m. - The fight for viability
If you want a window into what those second-alignment negotiations are like, our Katie Akin has a good thread from Drake. Click and scroll.
The spaces for each group are delineated by hurdles with candidate names taped to them, which I think is very charming for a fieldhouse venue. Sports !
Still waiting for official first alignment count.
FIRST ALIGNMENT at Drake Fieldhouse:
Sanders and Warren are viable. No one else is.
Bernie fans chanting, “come on over, come on over!”
The three Yang fans are mobbed with caucusgoers and press.
27 people are talking about this
5:20 p.m. - Food, glorious food
When caucusgoers are in the basement of a shopping center, food can never be far from the brain. A savvy precinct captain is on the pizza case.
The precinct captain just essentially said they’re providing pizza to caucus goers so no one gets hangry.
See ChrisSikich's other Tweets
5:15 p.m. - In Florida, 'vote blue, no matter who'
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. – Iowa’s pivotal, first-in-the nation caucuses may take place in the dead of winter, but here in this sunny Florida Gulf Coast community, 135 Iowa residents had the luxury of showing up in shorts and T-shirts to caucus.
For the first time, the Iowa Democratic Party has allowed state Democrats to cast ballots at multiple satellite sites, including four in Florida.
At the packed Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Charlotte County, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar earned the most support at 56 caucusgoers. Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, had 45. Former Vice President Joe Biden came in third with 33 supporting.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 12 supporters. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang each had one supporter.
Other caucus sites in Florida were in Gulf Breeze, Miramar Beach and St. Petersburg. Many of the attendees drove multiple hours to vote.
Among them were Lanny Schwartz and his wife, Jane Allen, of Cedar Falls. They drove four and a half hours from Key Largo to participate.
“I like (Joe) Biden, because I think he’s most likely to beat Trump, and that seems to be the main thing here. I think all of us here just want to defeat Trump,” Lanny Schwartz said. “We think what’s been going on is outrageous compared to what’s right and what’s in the Constitution.”
Karla and John Hansen were split in their support for Biden and Buttigieg.
Although all had their candidates of choice, one chant heard over and over in the crowd was, “Vote blue, no matter who.”
- Frank Gluck
4:50 p.m. - Fieldhouse frolics and the Fight for 15
An hour before the 4:30 p.m. caucus at the Drake University Fieldhouse began, the building was already awash in activity.
Demonstrators from the Fight for 15 movement gathered outside the building on the corner of Forest Avenue and 27th Street to demand a $15 an hour minimum wage and union rights.
Fight for 15 has not endorsed a candidate for president in 2020.
To the tune of muffled chants from outside, student athletes in the fieldhouse practiced discus and softball on a turf field. Drake softball players Kristen Arias, 19, and Emily Valtman, 18, finished a game of catch about 30 minutes before the event began.
Misty Rebik, Iowa state director for Bernie Sanders, joined a large group of enthusiastic Sanders supporters in the bleachers.
“I’ll be working later tonight!” Rebik explained.
While other caucusgoers waited in small groups, the Sanders supporters waved signs and cheered for reporters below.
Hannah Hansen, a 22-year-old marketing and psychology major at Drake, caucused for Sanders in 2016 in Davenport. She wasn’t surprised by the crowd.
“When I caucused four years ago for Bernie, they were also super pumped-up,” Hansen said. “I just feel like there’s something about Bernie. ... Something about it is just exciting.”
— Katie Akin
4:36 p.m. - A late endorsement for Warren
Deidre DeJear took to Twitter to endorse U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. DeJear ran for Iowa Secretary of State in 2018 and is a rising star in the Democratic Party here. She previously backed U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
"I am thrilled to be supporting Elizabeth Warren in this election," DeJear said. "She is one of those individuals who truly believes in the value of people and the hard work that they put in every single day to make do for their families and their communities. And she wants to be supportive of that."
- Kim Norvell
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From the field - The caucuses begin in the Caucasus
Monday’s very first Iowa caucus took place without a hitch in a city that has spent long periods under Persian and Russian rule. Tbilisi, in Georgia, is an ex-Soviet republic and the heart of the Caucasus region, an area that straddles eastern Europe and Western Asia. Tbilisi was also the first of the so-called Iowa satellite caucuses to see action Monday, as voters there chose their preferred Democratic candidates for the 2020 race for the White House. No matter that only three Iowans showed up.
“The Tbilisi caucus was conducted successfully, over a traditional Iowan meal of pizza and ranch dressing — accompanied by a Georgian wine,” its organizer, Joshua Kucera, tweeted, about 8 hours ahead of when many of the caucuses in Iowa are due to kick off. Alongside his comments, Kucera posted a picture of Iowa’s vertical red, white and blue tricolor flag with a bald eagle in its middle.
At stake Monday in Iowa are 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Iowa’s Democratic Party has permitted this year 87 satellite caucuses, three of them international. In addition to Tbilisi, caucuses will also be held in a graduate student’s apartment in Glasgow, Scotland, and in Paris, where the mayor of France’s capital has agreed to let an American overseas college student host an Iowa caucus event.
On a blustery and rainy Monday, 20 Iowans showed up in Scotland's capital to express their preference for who should be the Democrats' next standard-bearer.
Sanders garnered the most support, with nine Iowans backing him to receive the nomination, followed by six for Elizabeth Warren and three for Pete Buttigieg. One voter chose not to express a second preference after her candidate did not receive enough backing to make it to a second round. Another was unable to vote because she turned up late.
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but it feels like the future is at stake with this election," said Lucy Schiller, 31, who is teaching American literature and creative writing at a college in Germany and traveled to Glasgow for the caucus. She previously taught at the University of Iowa. "This is the last off-ramp we have before climate disaster."
- Kim Hjelmgaard
From the field - The media has taken over Iowa
Not only have presidential campaigns taken over Iowa, so has the media.
Hundreds of reporters from across the country, and even internationally, have descended on the state for the first-in-the-nation caucuses.
In downtown Des Moines, the NBC network has taken over a local coffee shop, Java Joe’s Coffee House. Several large trucks for the network crowded the street outside the shop. A sign that says “MSNBC at Java Joes” is displayed right when you walk in.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was hosted live from there, and MSNBC anchor Katy Tur also went live at 2 p.m.
Dell Radcliffe, 68, said she went down to Java Joe’s to “see what was going on” after missing “Morning Joe” in the morning. But when Radcliffe, who is from Des Moines, walked in, she found out that Tur — whom Radcliffe said she didn’t know — was going to go live in the afternoon and decided to stick around.
“I started plugging my meter,” Radcliffe said. Radcliffe said she is still undecided with who she is going to caucus for but is leaning to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but her husband, Mike Delaney, is going to caucus for former vice president Joe Biden.
Diane Miles, who is also from Des Moines, was sitting at Java Joe’s with a volunteer for Biden that she is hosting for the caucuses. The volunteer, John Douglass, is a retired Air Force general who is going around different states volunteering for Biden’s campaign.
- Rebecca Morin
3:45 p.m. - 181 chairs
Organizers filled the first-floor atrium of the Capital Square office building in downtown Des Moines with 181 chairs ahead of Monday night’s caucuses.
Democratic residents of Des Moines’ 55th precinct, which includes about half of downtown Des Moines, will gather there at 7 p.m. to make their presidential picks.
Caucus organizers will stand on a small stage in front of the chairs to address the caucusgoers, and a row of tables was erected near an entrance them.
- Austin Cannon
3:15 p.m. - National media prepares for caucus night
More than 2,600 members of the media fill the Iowa Convention Center Monday night when it turns into a media filing center. Prominent members of the media, including CNN's Jake Tapper, begin to file into the building around 3 p.m. Tapper spends a few minutes with students from the University of Chicago.
3:10 p.m. - Candidate celebrations
National media set up cameras at U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota's "victory" party at the downtown Des Moines Marriott four hours before the caucuses.
— Shelby Fleig
3 p.m. - Press conference
A Keep Iowa Great news conference, sponsored by Donald J. Trump for President Inc., starts at the Sheraton in West Des Moines. His son Eric Trump is in attendance.
- Sarah LeBlanc
2:45 p.m. - Windsor Heights residents: Double-check your caucus location
A Des Moines suburb had to correct an incorrect caucus location it published on social media Monday.
Residents in Windsor Heights’ first precinct should still plan to gather at Windsor Elementary School, said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.
Whitney Tucker, the spokeswoman for the city of Windsor Heights, said the Iowa Democratic Party called the city Monday to inquire about using a city community center in case a nearby precinct location fell through.
Iowa caucuses: More problems reported in Iowa
The Iowa Democratic Party first told the city that the precinct location at Clive Elementary School — Windsor Heights’ second precinct — had fallen through, Tucker said. Then, the IDP said the Windsor Elementary location would need to be moved.
Windsor Heights posted about the location change before the IDP confirmed that Windsor Elementary, the original location, would be good to go. In a final Facebook post, the city said it wasn’t trying to mislead caucusgoers and told residents to contact the Democratic party to find their caucus location.
“We just wanted to make sure our residents knew where they could go,” Tucker said.
Iowans can visit iwillvote.com to find their precinct location.
- Austin Cannon
2:20 p.m. - The caucuses bring people together
A Register reporter shares excitement over the caucuses with an Iowan. This year is expected to have higher turnout for the Democratic caucuses than 2008, which was a record year.
- Sarah LeBlanc
Downtown Des Moines encounter: I was on the up escalator. A woman was headed toward me on the down escalator.
She made eye contact and said “CAUCUSES TONIGHT??” and I nodded frantically and then we escalated out of each other’s lives.
See Katie Akin's other Tweets
2 p.m. - Politicians, neighbors show preferences
Urbandale Mayor Bob Andeweg gives last-minute support to former Vice President Joe Biden. U.S. Sen. of New Jersey and former presidential candidate Cory Booker gives his support to organizers and volunteers, tweeting to remind them to drink water and eat food between shifts.
One yard is creative with their support for three candidates, dressing melting snowmen as Biden, former South Bend, IndianaMayor Pete Buttigieg, and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
- Sarah LeBlanc
1:50 p.m. - Iowa Cubs celebrate the Iowa Caucuses
A video board at Principal park shows the team logo of the Iowa Caucuses. The team played a game as the Caucuses this summer.
1 p.m. - 15 people attend Iowa’s first caucu
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont won the precinct’s first alignment in Ottumwa with 14 people. One person caucused for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and did not go with Sanders on the second alignment.
The Iowa Democratic Party will award delegates from the satellite caucus locations based on their final turnout later in the evening. The ultimate winner of Iowa's caucuses will be based on those delegate numbers.
— Sarah LeBlanc
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both have precinct captains here, and it doesn’t appear that caucusgoers plan to support anyone other than those two candidates at the moment.
14 of 15 caucusgoers are standing with Bernie Sanders on the first alignment. One is standing with Elizabeth Warren.
1,262 people are talking about this
12:45 p.m. - Candidates make their last push
Several presidential candidates met with their supporters to urge them to connect with voters before the caucuses.
Former Vice President Joe Biden visited his south side campaign office and said he felt good about the night to come. Tom Steyerasked dozens of supporters to continue canvassing for him. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg made an appearance at his West Des Moines field office. Andrew Yang began the day in Grinnell with a canvass lunch
Several senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Bernie Sanders, could not be in Iowa due to the impeachment trial. They have surrogates campaigning for them Monday. Klobuchar's husband, John, and daughter Abigail delivered donuts to her Des Moines field office in the morning. Candidates were planning on be
As the candidates prepare for their first real test, Des Moines Register reporters looked back at their campaigns, some of which began more than a year ago:
11:30 a.m. - The first Iowa caucus is about to begin in Ottumwa
Ottumwa's caucus begins at noon. Located in Wapello County, the town of about 24,000 is the first of roughly 1,700 Iowa caucus locations to meet. The satellite caucus is held at the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 230 union hall.
The satellite caucus is being held earlier to accommodate those who work in the evenings.
— Sarah LeBlanc
1:15 a.m. - Students have a sweet caucus experience
Fourth and fifth graders at Downtown School participate in a cookie caucus. The students chose ice cream as the winner with 66% of the vote, and pie for second place at 31%.
— Sarah LeBlanc
11 a.m. - The first caucus wraps up in Tblisi, Georgia
While most caucuses begin at 7 p.m., one international caucus has already finished. Three Iowans in Georgia (the country) finished caucusing by 11 a.m. CST. Tblisi is one of three international satellite locations for the Iowa caucuses – the others are Paris and Glasgow, Scotland.
The Tbilisi caucus was conducted successfully, over a traditional Iowan meal of pizza and ranch dressing – accompanied by Georgian wine. The results will be reported along with the rest of the results after the caucuses in Iowa take place.
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— Sarah LeBlanc
10:45 a.m. – President Trump’s children share memories, predictions for Caucus Day
Ivanka Trump posted memories on Twitter of the 2016 caucus, including a photo of herself and her father in Waterloo and sharing McDonald’s on Trump Force One.
Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, “Joe Biden better win big or he’s in trouble,” saying that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has kept senators running for president busy in Washington, D.C., due to the “impeachment hoax.”
President Trump is projected to win the Republican caucus in Iowa. Joe Walsh and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld are also running for the Republican nomination.
— Sarah LeBlanc
9:45 a.m - An art installation in Des Moines shows fake children in cages
The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services has set up cages around the city outside of candidate and media offices to bring attention to children in detention centers on the border of Mexico.
The cages feature a sign that reads "Don't Look Away," and play a recording from a child in detention. The nonprofit will hold a news conference at 5:30 p.m. at Trinity Las Americas United Methodist Church.
Des Moines police had this to say: "The City of Des Moines enjoys the privilege of hosting and participating in Iowa’s 'first in the Nation' caucuses, and has a long history of supporting the expression of differing opinions and accommodating the right to lawful protest. Keeping with that spirit, the Des Moines Police Department welcomes this piece of the political process, however we would like to request that when placing items to promote political agendas, candidates, or expressions of opinion, please consider not abandoning these items on public sidewalks or other public property.
— Sarah LeBlanc
9:15 a.m. - Here's what you need to know before heading to your precinct
The Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican parties to offer free rides starting at 4 p.m. to help caucusgoers make it to their precincts.
Those who still have questions about where to caucus and how to register can find all the answers here.
— Sarah LeBlanc
8:15 a.m. - National media descends on coffee shops
Before the sun came up on Caucus Day, two TV shows and NPR were already taping and recording segments with a crowd.
NPR's popular show "Morning Edition" started at Smokey Row Coffee Co. at 5 a.m. and welcomed presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg around 6 a.m. MSNBC's "Morning Joe" with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski began welcoming visitors at Java Joe's downtown Des Moines at 3:30 a.m. and began their live show at 5 a.m.
At Drake Diner, patrons could sip coffee and watch CBS "This Morning" at 6 a.m.
— Sarah LeBlanc
7:30 a.m. - What to expect on Caucus Day
From candidate appearances to just how the Iowa caucuses work, Des Moines Register Chief Politics Reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel will share what to expect today as the first-in-the-nation caucuses kick off Election 2020.
Des Moines Register Chief Politics Reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel will share what to expect Monday as the Iowa caucus kick off Election 2020. Des Moines Register
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