Ground, ali . Were still counting votes the old way, but they are going to be transmitted to the state parties a little bit differently. Precinct captains will have an app on their phone, as long as they count correctly, they can relay the votes correctly. Youll remember the last time around, iowa went on for hours and hours and hours. There were missing ballots, and people had to phone in the results. Well that is supposed to end tonight. There is a paper and pen backup, but the good news that we should have, at least fiefficient counting. The big numbers probably will take a couple of hours, john. Ali your audio was off in the beginning. Explain where you are tonight. Im at the Microsoft Media Center in downtown des moines. Microsoft is using the system its their system that precinct captains will used to remain information to the state party headquarters, which will certify them. Microsoft is sort of the gobetween tonight, john. All right. David shuster is here to take a look at why this contest is so important. Nobody is reporting any problems with those caucuses which have now closed across the state. Lets start with some final polls in both parties. Here we go with the republican race. The numbers had donald trump ahead of ted cruz by about five points. And then on the democratic side, the Des Moines Register poll yesterday had Hillary Clinton up three in the Des Moines Register poll, and then there was a second poll that came oured today on the democratic side, the Des Moines Register poll from yesterday, there was another pole that came out today where the turnout model was slightly different, and that poll has Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton, 4946. This is how close the race is. Iowa voters have been watching and meeting the candidates for nearly a year. So the judgments tonight will set the tone for the rest of the campaign, and put the political world on notice. This land is your land, this land is my land reporter it has already been one of the quirkiest and most unpredictable president ial races in decades. What the tell do we have to talk so much . Just do it, right . Reporter and in both parties the results will begin to answer key questions. How vulnerable is the political establishment. Reporter before it was called obamacare, it was called hilary care. Reporter and what is the depth and duration of voter angry. For the candidates a win tonight will mean a bonanza in media attention, a surge in donors. Unless i win, i would consider it a big, fat, beautiful, and by the way very expensive waste of time. Reporter the celebrity and billionaire developer has lead every g. O. P. National and statewide poll. By the way we have the biggest crowds by far. Reporter if he wins the caucuses, trump, according to ted cruz could run the table. If he went on to win New Hampshire as well, theres a very good chance he could be unstoppable. Reporter cruz who shut down the government two years ago is the leading antiestablishment alternative to trump. If ted cruz wins thats a great story too. Reporter and marco rubios rivals have largely abandoned iowa. I feel good. The crowds are growing. Our Campaign Structure feels good about it. So well see what it leads to. Reporter for many candidates, including ben carson, carly fiorina, and others a poor finish tonight will likely mean the end of the road. On the democratic race. Hillary clinton is trying to avoid a surprising setback. Thank you her campaign is better organized and funded than eight years ago, and this nomination race was supposed to be a clinton cake walk. Stick have the experience. Stick with the ideas that will actually work for our country. Clintons pragmatism has faced a strong challenge from Bernie Sanders. The status quo is simply not acceptable. We are going to make fundamental changes in our economy and in our political life. Reporter if sanders wins tonight, he will likely build on his lead in New Hampshire, surge in other states and all but guarantee that clinton faces a long and dangerous nomination fight. Join in the political revolution. Thank you all very much. [ cheers and applause ] reporter iowa has never been a great predictor of who ultimately wins a president ial nomination, but it can provide the rocket fuel for an insurgent campaign. And that is why the republican and democratic establishments tonight are so nervous as they see the caucuses are underway, john, there is a great fear there is going to be a rejection election, in other words the outsiders thats who those caucus goers are going to support. As you mentioned the doors are now closed to the cause cusses, so theres no much more the candidates or their campaigns can do tonight. Right now voters are coming together and they will have their final say. And it may be a couple of hours before we have any results. Lets go to ali in des moines. Reporter youll get early results from some small republican precincts. So within half an hour well get some results, but they will be small precincts and they will be republican. For the democrats. The candidatess surrogates give speeches, so that will take at least 90 minutes, and then they all move around the room. Iowa is not a winnertakeall state. Even ted cruz comes in second to democratic strategist Donnie Fowler donald trump, the closest thing to the establishment is marco rubio. For the democrats this is a more serious issue, because Hillary Clinton is ahead, according to the latest polling, but well within the margin of error. We know she is 20 points behind in New Hampshire, so if Bernie Sanders because particularly well, this gives you momentum. David is right in saying that the outcome of iowa is only right about half of the time, but it is about momentum. We have spoken to Mike Huckabee who said if he doesnt do well, he may be out of the race. Rick santorum who won the last time around, even though it was declared to be mitt romney, if he doesnt do well, he will have to rethink his chances, as will carly fiorina. Lets go to michael shure. Tell us where you are, michael. Reporter well, ali right now im at a Republican Caucus at roosevelt high school, and what is happening now, ali is they are giving the speeches before the caucus. They have done the pledge of allegiance. A gentlemen speaking on behalf of ted cruz, this is how it goes. About 60 people here. Tending to be a little older in this room. Also were in polk county. Polk county is decidedly democratic. On the other side of this school. They are taking up three rooms for the democrats. All right. Have you had a chance to talk to people . Are they coming in decided . Or are they coming in to listen to those speaks that were listening to now . Reporter most of what the people have decided on their candidates there are two democrats i spoke to who have ledgesterred today. Could you be passionate, i want to listen to this. Reporter all right. They are asking me to keep it down, ali. All right. Ill let you guys all listen in. It is an interesting phenomenon here in iowa. You can go in and register as a republican or democrat on this very day. You dont have to do it ahead of time. Lets go to duarte geraldino. I saw lineups of students waiting to caucus. What is going on where you are . Reporter this room is still not filled with the maximum number of people that want to come in here. But as you can see there is only standing room, ali. There are some people sitting on the staircases. Im going to ask my partner to look over here, because they are squeezing in over here. They are divided along the lines of the candidates. There certainly is lot of momentum over here. On the other side, you see omalley and Hillary Clinton, a lot of people say this could be their first or second time, but they really wanted to play a part in this process. There are five precincts here, so five separate caucuses, and the line is out the door up the stairs and actually on the sidewalk. So this caucus effectively still hasnt started. So we havent had the speeches yet. They may try to find a different place to move the crowd, because it may not actually accommodate everyone who wants to get, ali. While Bernie Sanders is doing particularly well in that demographic, all of those people what are lining up, they only give them the same weight of votes tonight, so it may not work to his advantage, because students are concentrated in a few pockets around the state, not all over. Reporter thats a very valid point of what is happening over here. However, some students are saying that they actually are going back home. So these are the factions that are actually here. Some students saying this is so important that they are going back to their home precincts to take part in the caucuses. All right. John very different scenes there. Yeah, democracy at work, and sometimes its messy. Lets go back to our panel now. Republican joe watkins a former white house aid to george h. W. Bush. And David Shuster is back. It is a great example of just how messy this process is, and they are not the same, right, genie . Yeah, absolutely. They caucus very differently. And that was very telling when you compare the two. The republicans have a private ballot, and the democrats have a more rowdy process. It says something about this country that this is the First Political contest in 2016. Absolutely, so exciting of course, a lot of the campaigns already know where they stand, and they are really trying to measure how people see them, so like if you are chris christie, if you are saying if im the leading governor in the Iowa Caucuses thats a win for me. You have to dial back expectations so that whatever you do looks like a win. And david you contend that the candidates now already know who is in the room . Yes, because they keep lists the maximum that a democratic candidate can expect to win tonight, maybe 80,000 tops. I guarantee, Hillary Clinton, and the Bernie Sanders, they have their lists. Likewise ted cruz on the republican side, he knows whether his supporters went to the caucus. Some of the candidates not as well organized would be donald trump, he is simply counting on a large turnout. But for the clinton and Sanders Campaign this is White Knuckle time. Lets talk about when we might expect to get results. Its going to be a long time before you are going to get the precinct from the democrats thats right. Because the room is not big enough. They might have to move it to another room. Everybody is cheering. It looks like chaos, right . [ laughter ] yeah, but they can predict im glad you are better than i am, because i could not predict anything. Students are polling for Bernie Sanders 21. We know that. So they know how those university precincts are going to do. Reporter there is a live shot from West Des Moines where donald trump is in the crowd. Can we hear on that shot . And this is another part of the process, which just blows me away. This is not secret ballots. These are people who come in and the candidates happen to talk in at the same time. [ laughter ] sometimes the candidates themselves rather than having somebody appointed to speak on their behalf, youll have the main candidate themselves at the big caucuses. Barack obama and Hillary Clinton did that eight years ago. They will speak on behalf of themselves to the caucus goers to make their case. Maybe the biggest question is whether donald trump has the machine to turn out votes . He has attracted voters that typically do not go to the caucuses. And are they going turn out . Or are they going to stay home . In 2007 and 2008, barack obama got firsttime caucus goers out to the polls, and he was able to win and beat Hillary Clinton as a result. So for both, donald trump, and Bernie Sanders, the highest the turnout the better they do, and they are appealing to constituents that tend not to vote in primaries or caucuses. All right . H. Were going back to des moines. Reporter welcome to the campaign of 2016, john. Lets talk to mo, the executive director of georgetown universitys institute of politics and Public Service, but before that he was Communications Director with the Democratic National council. Good to talk to you. Until now, mo, in this race, we have been largely focused on undoing of the Republican Party. The democrats have been coasting along without all of that much attention on it, but tonight that changes, because whether Hillary Clinton wins or doesnt win here, Bernie Sanders is doing up strong, and we know he is strong going into New Hampshire. What is how do you gauge this, not between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but as it reflects on the Democratic Party . Well, its interesting. I was looking at some polls the other day, and what really struck me is there are a couple of things that really struck me. Number one Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were both remarkably popular, they had Favorability Ratings in the 80 range. Thats very different than the republicans who where its almost a race to the bottom to see who is disliked the least. Right. And when you listen to them both speak, they are delivering different messages. They both are delivering a very populous message about being a champion. They come with different flavors to that message, but i dont see this as a big referendum on the Democratic Party, as much as the candidate that people like. Is this expected to go a certain way and Bernie Sanders is sort of messing that up. Democrats tend to go with where the voters take them. So thats what well see tonight. I think tonight both candidates will come out, regardless of how it plays out, though i do think looking at the numbers and the organization, i do think hilary pulls out a very narrow win tonight. But regardless of how it plays out, it will be close and both sides will claim victory. I think this will go on for a little while, but bernie was never supposed to be in this. But if you believe recent polls the momentum was headed his way, and she was able to hold him off in a state that has never been very good to her. She came in third place in 2008 in iowa. If she is able to hold him off, that speaks volumes about her organization. Were taking a look at live pictures of martin omalley. He is trying to play up his youthfulness, the youth seem to be liking Bernie Sanders and he is able to go in there, but he is not polling any serious numbers there. But were taking a look at that. Mo im going to come back to you in a little bit and talk about three constituencies, women, the young people, and we want to talk about african americans, because you said this is going to go on for a while, and that means this may be into play well after South Carolina. Now im going back to john in new york. Ali the weather always has the potential affect turnout. Kevin corriveau is here with a look at how things turned out in iowa tonight. Thats right. If we were to look at this storm three days ago, we knew iowa would be impacted. If it was six to eight hours earlier, we would see a much different result on the people coming to these events. We are looking at the storm system here. But we are seeing the snow all the way up towards the northeast. I want to show you what we talking about. We are getting rains in part of iowa, but the big problem is not going to happen until after midnight, when all of the winter warnings go into effect. You can see up towards parts of the great lakes, but its that blizzard warning that is the big problem here. This goes into effect at 3 00 am into tuesday morning. That is going to continue towards wednesday morning, but take a look at what happens across much of the area. We are looking at blizzard conditions all day long for people traveling, a major problem there. Thank you very much. Our coverage of the iowa caucus continues in just a moment, but up next, other top stories. En up a date on how they are handling the zika crisis in puerto rico. Plus new details in the fatal crash of an amtrak train last may after this. And you are looking at a live picture from des moines, iowa, of a Democratic Caucus. Its going on right now. This the first test of the 2016 president ial election, upway in iowa. Our special coverage begins at 9 00 eastern time. But first some of the days other toch stories. Congress called for briefings on the zika virus today. The World Health Organization has now declared the disease an international emergency. A coordinated International Response is needed to improve surveillance, the detection of infections, con genital mall formations, to intensify the control of of mosquito populations, and expedite the development of diagnostic tests and vaccines to protect people at risk. Reporter this usually means more money and stepped up efforts to stop an outbreak. And some Health Officials say the virus may cause severe brain deformations in infants. The center of Disease Control has issued four more travel al