Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency.

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I'm joined today by Kate Andrews, the Spectator's Economics Correspondent, and we're going

to be asking what on earth just happened in Iowa. Now Kate,

it's about 11 o'clock in the morning here in Britain, 12 o'clock, sorry, time has passed me by,

spent far too long watching American television last night. And it seems to me we don't have

any result or an even indication of what the result might be

from the Iowa caucuses. What has happened? What's gone wrong? And why has it gone wrong?

We basically have nothing. A few precincts seem to have been able to submit their results,

but that tells you nothing when you're

waiting for over 1,700. It seems that trying to combine technology and updates with a fundamentally

archaic system of caucuses has gone spectacularly wrong. We often talk about an Iowa upset that

a candidate will manage to sneak through, do much better

than expected, even win in 2016. It was not the overall winner Donald Trump who won Iowa,

but it was Senator Ted Cruz, for example. This was also an Iowa upset, but a very different type.

...