With the next presidential election just 8 months away, polls and primaries have begun to spur hot debate around the country about who will be leading us come next year. On February 1st, the first of many polls to come took place during the Iowa Caucus. During the Caucus, representatives from the Democratic party spoke about their campaign and had a delegate vote based on which candidates had the most support.

The Democratic candidates that received the most delegate votes were Hillary Clinton with 23, Bernie Sanders with 21, and Martin O’Malley with 0. Hillary Clinton was predicted to win the Democratic vote, but by a much larger margin than she did. Three months ago, Sanders and Clinton faced off in Iowa, and Sanders trailed Clinton by 30 points.

It is clear that his campaign has been making great progress over those 3 months, and the race between these two candidates in the coming months will be quite interesting.

The Republican party had a more competitive race on their hands in Iowa. With a record setting attendance, there were more than 180,000 tallied votes for the Republican candidates. Coming in first place with 51,666 votes (27.6%) was Ted Cruz, followed by billionaire Donald Trump (24.6%), and Marco Rubio (23.1%).

Going into the Republican Caucus, it was expected that there would be a close race between those three candidates, however Donald Trump was the projected winner going into polling day. Unexpectedly, Ted Cruz pulled off the win for the Republicans by defeating Trump by 2%.

The Iowa Caucus has been a great indicator of which candidates stand a chance at gaining their respective party nomination, and the upcoming primaries will be an even better way of seeing who will be on the ballot come election day.