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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Ted Cruz Wins Iowa in Record Turnout; Clinton, Sanders in Dead Heat; 3rd Place Finish to Propel Rubio; O'Malley, Huckabee Suspend Their Campaigns. Aired 2-3a ET

Aired February 02, 2016 - 02:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[02:00:00] PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: We got more evidence tonight, the Democratic party is moving left in pretty dramatic ways and this is going to be an issue for party for years to come, especially with young voters, who are challenging even what has been considered liberal policies. That will be a challenge for Hillary Clinton and the next Democratic president.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: A lot to watch for.

I thank you all of you for joining us. Don't go anywhere. Our special live coverage continues right now with John Berman and Poppy Harlow.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a special "it's not over" edition of EARLY START. I'm John Berman.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow. Good morning to all of you. It is Tuesday, February 2nd. We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world.

What a night.

BERMAN: The breaking news is this, it is not over. It is 2:00 a.m. on the east coast, and the race for the Democrats is still too close to call, if you can believe it. We are still waiting for results from a few outstanding precincts. Those votes still being counted, still being searched for, frankly.

As you can see from the tally right there, it's the tiniest razor-thin lead. A virtual tie between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

HARLOW: When you look at the Republican side, for the GOP, a blockbuster night as far as voter turnout. You saw the lines heading into the caucusing. Well, look what happened. As we see, Ted Cruz declaring victory, beating Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, no question. It's been a night of big surprises on the Republican side.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night, though, is just how much we saw the Rubio surge play out. Now he's headed to New Hampshire, all eyes turn to New Hampshire. A lot to get through.

HARLOW: I want to bring in Chris Moody, CNN Politics senior digital correspondent. He is in Des Moines. Chris, let's start with this bizarro world we are in at 2:01 a.m. on

the east coast where the Democratic race isn't over. Explain to me what's happening right now.

CHRIS MOODY, CNN POLITICS SENIOR DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: You couldn't have asked for a more exciting caucus night in Iowa on both the Democratic and Republican sides. If you talked to anyone several months ago, they would have said this is Hillary Clinton's year. She'll run away with this. Maybe she'll get a little bit of attention here from other candidates but not much competition. But that is not the case here in Iowa. Bernie Sanders virtually tied with her tonight. Surprising, not a lot of people that were watching this close recently, but certainly a couple of months ago.

After the caucus results were rolling in, all of the candidates gave speeches.

Let's listen to what Bernie Sanders had to say.

BERMAN: Do you have details on the outstanding precincts and where the votes are and what they are doing to get them?

MOODY: It's just a couple of precincts that aren't reporting but it will come out a tie as far as the narrative of what people are saying about the Iowa caucuses. Here it's all about the expectation in Iowa. And the expectation for Hillary Clinton was high, that she would do very well. So Bernie comes out an expectation winner on a night like this because he has tied the person who is supposed to be the front- runner.

HARLOW: It's interesting. We heard the head of the Republican Party in Iowa saying over the weekend this was about a lot more than just who came in first. This was about who could exceed expectations. By all accounts, that was Marco Rubio tonight. He gave a very powerful, fired up speech. Also we heard from Ted Cruz. What stood out to you most from what Ted Cruz, the winner, said tonight?

MOODY: Well, Ted Cruz has solidified himself as somebody who's going to be formidable coming up in the next few weeks and months. For so long before, it looked like that Donald Trump was going to be the person that we were all going to watch out for. Of course, he still has a lot of power going forward. But by Ted Cruz taking it by so many thousands of votes ahead of Donald Trump, he really came out on top. Also, Marco Rubio, of course, giving a stronger showing than anyone really expected. Not just in third place, but right behind Donald Trump, who was really -- a lot of people said was supposed to take first place.

Let's listen to Ted Cruz and what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ, (R), TEXAS & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Tonight, thanks to the incredible hard work of everyone gathered here, of courageous conservatives across this state, we together earned the votes of 48,608 Iowans. (CHEERING)

CRUZ: To put it in perspective, your incredible victory that you have won tonight, that is the most votes ever cast for any Republican primary winner.

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[02:05:09] MOODY: Now I think that people are going to point to missteps along the way that Donald Trump had in the past. For example, here in October, listen to what he said about Iowans last year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Now if I lose Iowa, I will never speak to you people again. That I can tell you.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MOODY: He also said how stupid could Iowans be. Now he certainly has changed his tone tonight. Take in something we don't see a lot tonight with Donald Trump, and that's humility. Listen to what he told Iowans tonight after taking second place.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We finished second, and I want to tell you something, I'm just honored. I'm really honored. And I want to congratulate Ted, and I want to congratulate all of the incredible candidates, including Mike Huckabee, who has become a really good friend of mine. So congratulations to everybody.

Thank you. You're special. We will be --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MOODY: Certainly, a tough night for Donald Trump, somebody whose entire brand is about winning. And here he comes in second place. So he'll have to roar into New Hampshire to really have a strong showing going forward.

BERMAN: All right, Chris. Chris Moody for us in Des Moines.

The results again, Ted Cruz winning on the Republican side. Donald Trump in second. Marco Rubio in third. On the Democratic side, we don't know.

HARLOW: We still don't know.

BERMAN: They are still counting right now, looking for the votes from some precincts.

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Let's talk about this. A lot to digest on a night that is far, far from over. Let's bring in our panel, CNN political commentators, Tara Setmayer, Maria Cardona, Sally Kohn and Ben Ferguson, all with us, all very opinionated folk.

Let's start with the Dems.

The way that I heard, Tara, Van Jones describe it earlier that stood out to me was movement versus machine, right? Saying Bernie is the movement. Hillary Clinton is the machine. But actually we have no idea what took over tonight, movement or machine.

TARA SETMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think we do. There is some indication of that. The machine, the Clinton machine, is what the ground game was. They invested heavily in Iowa. She was embarrassed in Iowa in 2008 because they underestimated Barack Obama and did not invest in the infrastructure there. They tried to learn from those mistakes, so they started investing early on. With that said, we all say organization, organization is so important in Iowa. But then here you have Bernie Sanders, who came out of relative obscurity. I mean, a year ago, Hillary Clinton had 60. 5 percent, a career ago right now in Iowa, to Bernie Sanders at 6.7 percent. I'd say now you're looking at too close to call. That's a movement.

BERMAN: Maria, what are you hearing from the Clinton team here? They wanted a clear victory.

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Sure.

BERMAN: There's nothing clear as we sit here at 2:07 a.m. Maybe they'll squeak out the tiniest of margins.

CARDONA: Sure. Yeah.

BERMAN: What does this do going to New Hampshire where they're behind also?

CARDONA: I don't think it changes their calculus of where they were to begin with. And absolutely, they would have preferred a clear win with a wide margin. But at the end of the day, if she wins, a win is a win. But even if she doesn't win, right, I mean, let's think about this from the calculus of all of the primaries and caucuses. It would have been strange if she would have run the table. And I know that everybody talks about how she was the prohibitive front runner. That is the biggest myth that was perpetrated by Republicans and the media. They -- the Clinton campaign sat down her allies from the very beginning, more than a year ago, before she even decided to run and said, look, you guys, this is not going to be easy. No matter who she runs against on the Republican side, she is going to have somebody run against her on the Democratic side. And it is not going to be easy. They knew this. This is cooked into their strategy. So moving forward, she's going to focus on trying to do as well as she can in New Hampshire, and then South Carolina, Nevada, Super Tuesday. HARLOW: Sally, to you, when you talk about the voters that came out,

here's why -- let me counter-argue that Clinton perhaps should be worried. It was a lot older. The voters that came out to caucus tonight were older. That helped her when you compare it to four years ago and to eight years ago. You can't say that's going to be the case across the board in all of these other primaries. And she barely -- we don't even know if she's eked it out. How much did that help her tonight?

SALLY KOHN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There's no question that as Chris said earlier this is an expectations game in Iowa. And Bernie Sanders won the expectation game. No one expected him to do this well. That it is even close to a tie, whichever way it ends up, is a win for Bernie Sanders and his supporters. And the only maybe silver lining in all of this is that Hillary's camp has for a long time been trying to say they are not a front-runner because there is all kinds of political peril in being a front-runner.

Also, I would note that Hillary is a better candidate as an underdog. In 2008, after she lost to Barack Obama in Iowa, from New Hampshire on, she was a stronger candidate. And by some counts, I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, she actually won more vote, not delegates, but votes from that point forward than Barack Obama. So she kind of gets a fire in her when she's an underdog. Maybe this turns around.

But again, I think the larger issue here is she can't fight against what Bernie Sanders stands for, the politics he stands for, which shows the biggest deficit for Hillary Clinton as a candidate.

[02:10:39] BERMAN: Ben Ferguson, let's shift gears to the Republicans. We do have a clear winner in this race. Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses. This after Donald Trump told us that he was going to win so much we were all going to be sick of winning.

(LAUGHTER)

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah. Donald Trump, I'll quote him tonight with one of his tweets from back in 2013, when he says, "No one ever remembers who comes in second place." Well, tonight, everyone remembers who came in second place, and that's Donald Trump. And when you put the expectations where he did -- remember this whole week, people have been talking about Ted Cruz is in trouble. And even, you know, the front page of the newspapers, after the debate, you know, were saying how brilliant Donald Trump was to skip that debate and everyone went after Ted Cruz. And now Ted Cruz is in trouble. I have said this about Iowa before. It's proof last time with Santorum. Iowa voters do not like to be told what they are going to do on caucus night. I kept saying it all week long, you are underestimating the voters of Iowa. Not Ted Cruz. Not Marco Rubio. Not Donald Trump. You're underestimating the voters there. And what the voters said tonight was they didn't buy, for example, 2 Corinthians. They also said they really liked the authenticity of not only Ted Cruz but also I think Marco Rubio. And the big thing tonight is this. If you're Ted Cruz, you may have focused too much on Donald Trump and this war back and forth, because both candidates now, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, are in real trouble with Marco Rubio now. That's the big story coming out of there.

BERMAN: Ben, stand by.

We understand there is out-and-out glee on the Ted Cruz campaign plane. It's on the ground in Des Moines getting ready to take off to fly to New Hampshire.

Our Sunlen Serfaty is onboard the Cruz express.

Sunlen, set the scene. What's the mood like onboard?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): John, it is a festive atmosphere aboard this plane where Senator Cruz and his family and daughters are here, about ready to take off to Manchester, New Hampshire. Before the plane took off, the flight attendants here onboard popped champagne and served champagne to Senator Cruz, his wife, and members of his staff. His oldest daughter, Caroline, only 7 years old, is having a little fun with her dad being the man of the moment. She is seated right next to her dad, greeting each and every reporter as they got on saying, "What's your name," and telling them to get to the back of the plane. It is a festive atmosphere. A party like atmosphere here on the Cruz plane. He will fly for three hours to New Hampshire, and then really hit the ground running. He tomorrow will have a town hall at 12:30 in Wyndham, New Hampshire. Then he'll go on, really wasting no time campaigning. Senator Cruz telling reporters as they got on the plane here tonight that he feels fabulous -- John?

HARLOW: And it's Poppy here with John. When you think of the first line that Cruz said tonight, he said, "To God be the glory." Then he went on to bash the establishment in Washington, the establishment in the media, and he said, this will be left up to we the people. How much is he thanking the evangelical vote tonight?

SERFATY: Absolutely. That was a big part of his message in his speech tonight, Poppy. He opened and closed his speech saying god bless Iowa. That was a big message to evangelicals. He knows they propped him up in large part for his win in Iowa. He is looking to this support going forward, especially looking past New Hampshire, when the campaign looks for support in South Carolina and the southern states. They are going to lean again on evangelicals. Very conservative Republicans. They want them on their side. It's always been a big part of their strategy. They have not really tried to appeal to moderate Republicans as much. Really they have tried to go straightforward to the evangelicals, very conservative Republicans. And that seems to be the message that Cruz was sending in his victory speech in Iowa tonight -- Poppy?

BERMAN: And now literally on to New Hampshire.

Sunlen Serfaty, on the Ted Cruz campaign plane, a terrific report.

Literally, popping champagne on board as they get ready to take off.

(LAUGHTER)

HARLOW: Where's ours?

BERMAN: We don't get any. We're on for the next 3.5 hours. We'll hear from Poppy (ph) when she lands in Manchester and find out how the champagne feels 3.5 hours later.

HARLOW: Exactly. It's go time. Go, go, go. I heard Rubio has an event at 6:45 in the morning. No one sleeping tonight.

BERMAN: You have to seize the moment.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: For all of them, if things go well.

Look, Ted Cruz won. Everyone wants to say there is Marco-mentum. But Ted Cruz won.

(CROSSTALK)

[02:15:] BERMAN: And he's the guy of all of them, I think, that has the right to pop the champagne. He's only one who's won so far. We don't even know who won the Democratic race.

HARLOW: That's true.

BERMAN: With all eyes turning to New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton will take part in a presidential town hall Wednesday night. They may announce the winners of Iowa during the CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday night. Anderson Cooper will moderate. Both candidates will take questions from voters themselves. This will be fascinating. Wednesday, 8:00 p.m., only on CNN.

HARLOW: Coming up ahead for us, it is as we've been saying all night far too close to call at this hour on the Democratic side. What will the numbers bring in as they keep coming and coming throughout the night? We'll hear from what the Clinton camp has to say, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. This is CNN NEWS NOW.

(HEADLINES)

CHURCH: And that's your CNN NEWS NOW. I'm Rosemary Church.

CNN's special coverage of the Iowa caucuses continues right now.

BERMAN: It's overtime in the Iowa causes. We know Ted Cruz won in the Republican race, but we are still waiting to find out who won on the Democratic side. They are still waiting for precincts that have yet to report in. You can see Hillary Clinton with two-tenths of a percentage lead. 99 percent of the precincts reporting. This thing is just not over yet, a virtual tie.

But Hillary Clinton, she did not wait to find out the official answer before she took the stage. And Brianna Keilar is there with the Clinton campaign -- Brianna?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[02:20:21] BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hillary Clinton talking to an exuberant crowd here in Des Moines, flanked by her husband, the former president of the United States, and her daughter, Chelsea.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: So as I stand here tonight, breathing a big sigh of relief -- thank you, Iowa --

(CHEERING)

CLINTON: I want you to know I will keep doing what I have done my entire life. I will keep standing up for you. I will keep fighting for you. I will always work to achieve the America that I believe in, where the promise of that dream that we hold out to our children and our grandchildren never fades, but inspires generations to come.

Join me. Let's go win the nomination! Thank you all and God bless you.

(CHEERING)

KEILAR: Clinton telling this crowd she is looking forward to debating Bernie Sanders on their different visions of the future of this country. Her next stop, though, could be her toughest one, New Hampshire, where Bernie Sanders is leading considerably in the polls.

Brianna Keilar, CNN, Des Moines.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Brianna, thank you very much.

I want to bring in our panel and get them to weigh in, Tara Setmayer, Maria Cardona, Sally Kohn, Ben Ferguson, all with us.

You know, what else stood out to me, guys, from Clinton's speech is she said, I am a progressive who gets things done for people, universal health care, make college affordable for all.

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: It was as if she was speaking right to Bernie Sanders and not to all of us, Ben. She knows what she has to do here.

FERGUSON: She knows she's in trouble. And whether, you know, people want to admit it or not, this is not a good night for Hillary Clinton. Especially knowing what her mistakes were last time. She had already done this before. And their campaign knew how to fix it, and they couldn't fix it. Tonight, the fact that we're sitting here at 2:00 in the morning and we still don't know who won means that really Bernie Sanders won this. He won it with momentum moving forward. I also thought it was interesting tonight to see the difference

between Bernie Sanders and the way he was talking when he addressed the crowd, compared to Hillary. Hillary was trying to get excited, get angry, get frustrated, whereas Bernie looked out and really looked like, can you believe this? He looked like he really did have a win tonight. Hillary Clinton looked like she was pushed back a little bit on her heels. I think that tells you a lot about the evening and how this will go forward. It is not what her campaign wanted.

BERMAN: Ben, you mentioned Bernie Sanders and his speech. Let's play a little sound from Bernie Sanders. He spoke to the crowd in Des Moines before he headed to the airport.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I), VERMONT & DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: 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.

(CHEERING)

SANDERS: And tonight, while the results are still not known, it looks like we are in a virtual tie.

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, Sally, I just got back from Iowa like 20 minutes ago.

HARLOW: Boy, are my arms tired.

BERMAN: And they are. All of me. All of me is tired, in fact.

But when you go to the Bernie Sanders event and there is passion there. It's palpable. The supporters there adore Bernie Sanders. And Hillary Clinton needs to be careful. Right? She goes into New Hampshire now. And she has to make a choice. Does she turn up the heat on Bernie Sanders, or does she continue to run the disciplined campaign that she's been running, which is you talk about him a little bit but mostly focus on yourself, your plans, and the future. Does she need to mix this up, and is there a risk in doing so?

KOHN: Two points here. First of all, I think if we analyzed these two speeches side-by-side they gave tonight and the decibel at which they spoke and the language they spoke, they are very similar. I think we have to be careful to suggest that Hillary Clinton, by the way, is now the leading or only woman candidate in the Democrat field is somehow angry and none of the others are. They are very similar tone wise, so I think we need to be careful of that.

Number two, the substantive difference between Hillary and Bernie is fascinating. And watching Hillary to bridge that, she is trying to walk this line where she is saying, I agree with everyone that Senator Sanders is saying, but I can get it done because -- because what? You are a magical unicorn who can get these things done?

(LAUGHTER)

There's this wide gap in explaining how she's the person to deliver on the ideas that he has fired voters up on. And closing that gap will be her challenge.

[02:25:14] HARLOW: One of the questions to you, Maria and Tara, the passion gap -- let's call it that, if you will -- the passion gap. How does the man standing behind her, the former president, Bill Clinton, who became the self-proclaimed comeback kid in New Hampshire in 1992, how does he help his wife now embrace everything she stands for and appear to the voter even more passionate, while not re- inventing herself once again? You don't think she can?

SETMAYER: No. First of all, I want to address something that sally just said. I don't want to hear it that because Hillary Clinton -- we say that Hillary Clinton was what she was, which was angry, that somehow is a sexist comment. She was angry. And, you know, we're going -- I don't want to go there that --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Bernie Sanders was angry.

(CROSSTALK)

SETMAYER: But that's his thing. He is a curmudgeon. He's old and angry. We get it. Obviously, people like that. But when Hillary Clinton is angry, we're going to call her out for that. It's not sexist to call her out on it. That's number one.

Number two, does anyone honestly believe that she breathed a sigh of relief? No way.

FERGUSON: No.

SETMAYER: She is full of that. That is B.S. No. They are not happy about what happened.

BERMAN: The CNN poll had her down by eight points last week.

(CROSSTALK)

SETMAYER: Exactly.

CARDONA: But I wouldn't say it was a sigh of relief. I think it's a sigh of, holy crap, we're going to have to really fight for this.

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Hold on, one second.

Building on what Berman said, and that is the talking about the passion. Can, say, her husband help guide her, advise her to do that, her team, without re-inventing her once again? CARDONA: Absolutely. And that is something that Bill Clinton is

brilliant at. He is one of the most beloved politicians, Democratic and Republican, that we have seen in the country. And he, I think, better than anybody can fire up the Democratic base and can do it on her behalf. But the other thing, building on what sally had said earlier, Hillary is at her best when she's clawing at it, OK? So she knows she is in a fight. But like I said before, she knew she was going to be in a fight early on. And it is sort of laughable for me to hear Tara and Ben talk about how Bernie Sanders won, and he did great. And absolutely, he did wonderful. Not to take away anything from what he did. He ran a fantastic campaign. But you can see how eager the Republicans are to boost Bernie Sanders up, because they want to run against him.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Ben, last word. Go ahead.

FERGUSON: It's not desperate. Here's what I take away from tonight, and that is this. Everybody asked the question, will Bernie Sanders people show up, the same way they asked about Donald Trump. And the Bernie Sanders and the young Millennials that supported him, not only did they show up, they caucused in a place where it is hard to caucus. Bernie Sanders young people showed up tonight in big numbers, and they were willing to go through all of this for him. He has a lot of momentum. He has inspired young people. I give him full credit for that.

My point is, when I say who's walking out of here in a better place, you cannot tell me they are having more fun on Hillary Clinton's plane tonight than on Bernie Sanders plane. Bernie Sanders is a party tonight. He has probably smiled more tonight than in the last 35 years. That's how good of a night it was for him.

BERMAN: And it was twice. He smiled twice.

(LAUGHTER)

FERGUSON: Exactly. Two times. That's a lot.

BERMAN: All right, guys, stand by, stand by.

Marco Rubio just arrived in New Hampshire. When we come back, we'll talk about what he managed to do, why he thinks that bronze is a gold, and why the Republican establishment is over the moon over this third place showing.

Plus, we'll talk about Donald Trump some more, because Donald Trump you may have heard, did not win.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[02:32:36] BERMAN: New video into CNN. Let's look at what Marco Rubio looks like arriving in New Hampshire. This is the Manchester Airport. You fly in charter, walk in through these doors. And you're in the middle of the New Hampshire primary. Marco Rubio and his family -- look at the kid. She just wants to go to sleep. I don't care who won. I want a bed.

(LAUGHTER)

We'll play it back again and again and again. Marco Rubio again arriving in New Hampshire. You know, a dramatic entrance for the Florida Senator. Finishing third. A lot of people, including Poppy Harlow, think that finish propels him into a role as a major player now in the Republican race.

HARLOW: If you look at -- the last poll that came out, he was polling 15 percent. He comes in at 23 percent. And you look at where the establishment money goes now. If you add up the votes, 28 percent for Ted Cruz, 24 percent for Donald Trump, and 52 percent of Iowans voted for two people that the establishment hates. Where does the money go now?

BERMAN: You're right. The establishment money will go to Marco Rubio. No question about that.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Let's check in with CNN's Manu Raju who has been covering of Marco Rubio.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: A big night here in Iowa for Marco Rubio, exceeding expectations rather dramatically. Public polls heading into last night showed that he would probably end up with 15 percent of the vote. He did much better than that. Clearly, he's going to try to use this for momentum heading into New Hampshire.

Now in New Hampshire, a new focus for Marco Rubio. It's to unite the Republican Party establishment behind him. He is trying to make this a race between him and Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. He wants those other governors that are in the race, the ones that do draw support from a similar lane of voters, to eventually get out of the race. He has to beat them, particularly Jeb Bush. Also Chris Christie in New Hampshire. Assuming he does that, then he'll start to make the case even more aggressively that he is the only viable alternative to Cruz and Trump.

This is a big night for Marco Rubio. But the one challenge for him is that Ted Cruz did end up on top. The Rubio campaign had been hoping he would end up in second place, and that could have meant the beginning of the end of the Cruz campaign. Instead, it looks like Ted Cruz has more momentum.

But bottom line now, heading into New Hampshire, this is a race between the governors in the race and him. And he wants to make sure he outpaces them next Tuesday night.

Poppy and John?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Manu Raju, thank you so much. We appreciate that.

John, it's interesting, perhaps in hindsight, a deft move by Ted Cruz to turn all of the attack ads onto Marco Rubio, right?

(CROSSTALK)

[02:35:23] BERMAN: Then there really would have been Marco-mentum. The silver, if there's this much hype over getting third place, imagine if he'd come in second.

HARLOW: Exactly. Also Manu Raju's sources telling him that Rubio's camp now will dump a lot more money into TV ads in New Hampshire, $100,000 more, bring their total to --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: And he'll get a big endorsement tomorrow in South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott in South Carolina.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: And that's a big deal for the South Carolina race.

HARLOW: I think we should listen. Let's take a moment to listen to what Marco Rubio said when he took the podium tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: So this is the moment they said would never happen.

(CHEERING)

RUBIO: For months, they told us we had no chance. They told me I needed to wait my turn, that I needed to wait in line.

(APPLAUSE)

RUBIO: But tonight, here in Iowa, the people of this great state sent a very clear message. After seven years of Barack Obama, we are not waiting any longer to take our country back.

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I will just make one ironic note here. Marco Rubio, the first words on podium is, this is what -- no one said it would happen.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Literally, everyone the last week has said that Marco Rubio would finish third. The question is --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Not that close, though.

SETMAYER: It's much, much closer. That's what they didn't expect. Like you just said, Poppy, the "Des Moines Register" poll, which is supposed to be one of the most reliable, said he would end up with 15 percent. He had 23 percent, and he was nipping at the heels of Donald Trump. I don't think anybody expected that necessarily.

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Especially not Donald Trump.

SETMAYER: Especially Donald Trump. That's for sure.

But toward the end of the last couple of days who broke for Marco Rubio, the people who were undecided. Iowa is notorious before that. They broke heavily for Marco Rubio. That is what made the difference. What hurt Donald Trump -- I don't care what anybody says -- not showing up to the debate on Thursday hurt Donald Trump, not having a ground game. To come in there and give speeches and fly out hurt Donald Trump. Marco Rubio put in the work, and it paid off for him in the end.

FERGUSON: And he also spent a day in New Hampshire, which was a dumb move and disrespectful to the Iowa voters.

HARLOW: Trump did.

FERGUSON: Two days ago, he said I'm coming back in the same day. That's not good enough in Iowa. If you look at the numbers, let's not forget, Donald Trump almost came in third place. That was not supposed to happen. Rubio in third place, yes. But look how close they are. If you took Huckabee out of this thing before tonight, and if you look at where Carson is and move forward, there are a lot of votes out there that I think not only Marco Rubio could gain, and some of them may come away from Donald Trump moving forward. But Ted Cruz and Rubio aren't going to share that many votes. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio I think can share a lot of votes. And maybe people will say, wow, maybe Rubio is a guy I should look at again. They obviously did in Iowa. They will definitely do that in New Hampshire and South Carolina moving forward as well.

BERMAN: It's a good question. Put up the chart there and you can see the vote totals. Everyone says you're the anti-establishment candidates. You add them up and you get 60 percent, if you add Ben Carson. But if you put Donald Trump and Marco Rubio together, if you look at Donald Trump not as an anti-establishment extreme conservative candidate, but maybe as a guy who plays more to the middle, maybe there is a big lane in the middle, Maria, which is something that I know that the Democrats fear.

CARDONA: Well, I think that one of the things you need to look at, and you think you mentioned this earlier, where is the money going to go? That's where you're going to see, is there going to be a sort of centrist lane here? Right now what we're seeing is Marco Rubio does have momentum going into New Hampshire. But who's in New Hampshire right now? Who is camped there? You have Jeb Bush. You have Kasich. You have Chris Christie.

(CROSSTALK)

CARDONA: But the point is they have put everything into New Hampshire. So the question is, are they then going to get out? Will the donors go to Marco Rubio? The longer this goes -- because let's remember even though Donald Trump came in today in second -- and I think we're being unfair, because he's going to make second place great again.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Best line of the night so far. Berman is going to jump out of his suit if we don't start talking more about Ted Cruz.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: There's one human has won tonight and we are barely talking about it. There's one on the Democratic side. One human has won tonight and we're barely talking about him.

HARLOW: We're going to leave you, before we go to break, with the sound from the only winner of the night, Ted Cruz. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[02:39:57] CRUZ: Tonight, thanks to the incredible hard work of everyone gathered here, of courageous conservatives across this state, we together earned the votes of 48,608 Iowans.

(CHEERING)

CRUZ: To put it in perspective, your incredible victory that you have won tonight, that is the most votes ever cast for any Republican primary winner. (CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: John Berman, along with Poppy Harlow. We are in overtime in the Iowa caucuses. We do not have a result on the Democratic side. We do not have a winner yet. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders virtually tied. This number has been static now for about an hour with 9 percent of the precincts reporting. We are still waiting for just a handful more to report in with their results before we get a final number. CNN is not going to declare a winner. We have to wait for the Iowa Democratic Party because we frankly don't know what is left. HARLOW: Far too close.

BERMAN: Let's get our report from CNN's Chris Moody. He is in Des Moines with the very latest.

Chris, what are you hearing?

CHRIS MOODY, CNN POLITICS SENIOR DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: We're nearing 3:00 a.m. in the morning. Lots of the campaigns, most have already left town. As you said, no result on the Democratic side. There's a clear winner on the Republican side. There's been celebrations, popping of champagne. Democrats still watching the results. No matter what the campaigns say, we cannot call it. We are waiting for the Democratic Party. As of the last update, there is nothing. However, we have spoken to the Hillary Clinton campaign on her bus. And they're saying that they believe that they have won, that they will win, but only by a hair. They said they had a large turnout, second only to 2008. And they argue that that actually helped them. But by winning, remember, Iowa is an expectation game. And Hillary Clinton was said to be this inevitable nominee with this huge ground game. And if she wins by just a hair, is that really winning, given how well Bernie Sanders has done against Hillary Clinton?

[02:45:52] HARLOW: And, Chris, I mean, winning is winning, right? But Clinton's camp, I think it was interesting, took a very different tone in terms of their opinion on how tonight went than Bernie Sanders. What are they saying?

MOODY: Well, the Clinton campaign is saying that they believe that when the results are settled, that the Democratic Party is going to announce that they have more votes and more delegates than Bernie Sanders. But it's only really by one delegate more, which is going to show that degree into New Hampshire, there's still a battle. The momentum is going to be going with Bernie Sanders into that state, where he is polling really, really well. And in other states, Hillary Clinton is doing a lot stronger. In the short-term, Bernie Sanders is probably smiling pretty broadly right now if he is awake.

BERMAN: All right, Chris Moody, in Des Moines, thanks so much.

Let me read you a statement from the Iowa Democratic Party, "We are currently getting results from a small number of outstanding precincts, and results continue to be reported on our public website."

Their had been reports earlier that --

HARLOW: From the Sanders campaign.

BERMAN: They say that's inaccurate. The Iowa Democratic Party says that's inaccurate. "The outstanding precincts do have chairs and we are in the process of contacting to get their results."

That is what we know right now at 2:47 a.m. They are awaiting results from precinct chairs, a small handful still out there.

HARLOW: Some of the interesting factoids that we really geek out on, on this, the entrance polls, the evangelical vote, et cetera.

Ben Ferguson. I want to ask you about this. It's interesting when you look at the young voters, 17, who will be 18 in November, to 29. Of those young voters, 84 percent went for Sanders. 14 percent went for Clinton. And you could say, wow, that's a huge deal. That matters so much. In this night, it didn't, because there weren't so many of them. So those that point to the young voter as is it a wasted vote if you focus on it, what do you say?

FERGUSON: When it's this close, it matters. And I think moving forward in other states, especially when you get into the FEC, that is going to be something that can significantly help Bernie Sanders. The same way that momentum with young people -- you don't need necessarily a ton of them voting. But they make incredible volunteers on your campaign. That is one of the things that Barack Obama did so well the first and the second time. He had an incredible amount of young people that were willing to go knock on doors. The same way that Bernie Sanders did. Bernie did not have a ground game. He admitted that nine months ago in Iowa. Where did it come from? He had a lot of college students that were coming out and going door-to-door and working the phones for him. It wasn't a lot of older people. It wasn't the establishment of the Democratic Party. This is something he tapped into. It's very valuable moving forward for him. And I think it's probably his biggest secret, his biggest asset to see this. And the same way that you saw a guy like Rand Paul when he did so well early on with Republicans. At his rallies, there was a lot of young people that kept him alive. This is the same for Bernie Sanders, where you have to look at it and say he is using them well.

BERMAN: Tara, I want to switch to the Republican side, because we do have a sense where Ted Cruz may have created some distance between himself and the other voters. You asked voters who shares your values the most. When you put that up on the screen there, Ted Cruz by a long shot. 38 percent to 21 percent for Rubio, 15 percent for Ben Carson, 7 percent for Rand Paul. Donald Trump is not even on that screen. He is at 5.

SETMAYER: Right.

BERMAN: So Ted Cruz just crushed him.

SETMAYER: He did. And the other place where Marco Rubio crushed it was on electability.

BERMAN: Right.

SETMAYER: And then where Donald Trump came in was, who tells it like it is? He got --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: But the people don't seem to care about that as much.

SETMAYER: That's right. Only 15 percent of voters cared about that, which is why Ted Cruz won. They vote for people they feel connected to. I think that Ted Cruz hit that nerve with the evangelicals and people who are true conservatives in Iowa.

I want to make a quick observation about what's happening with the Democrat side. There was an article in "Time" last week that talked about the Democrats were short precinct chairs by about 200. So I wonder if the fact that they didn't have their acts together with the precinct chairs is what is holding up and delaying the final result.

[02:50:17] HARLOW: You heard what the Democratic Party came out and said in Iowa.

SETMAYER: I don't think they want to admit it.

HARLOW: Well, they're saying --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: All we can report is what they are saying. They are saying that is not the case.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Someone is walking around with a bunch of ballots in their pocket.

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: Didn't we learn after Florida that you need people to count things? I mean, did we not learn anything? Every year we come down to this. It's simple math. You count. You put one person in one basket, one in the other basket --

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: -- and you have someone count it.

BERMAN: That's what makes it exciting for us this morning at 2:50 a.m., and we still don't know who won the Iowa caucus for the Democratic side.

If you stay with us, maybe we'll find out.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Rosemary Church. This is CNN NEWS NOW.

(HEADLINES)

CHURCH: Do stay tuned to our coverage of the results in Iowa caucuses.

HARLOW: Iowa, not the final stop for -- or, indeed, the final stop for at least two presidential candidates. Democrat Martin O'Malley suspending his campaign tonight. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee does the same.

I think the big question for our panel is, who is next?

Sally, to you. When you look at who is pulling out in the days and weeks ahead, who's next?

KOHN: Well, there's so many on the Republican side. How much time do we have?

This is interesting. I want to step back and sort of look at the big picture. Democrats win big tonight because not only do both candidates have strong consistent support, but the top two candidates to come out of the Republican side, Cruz and Trump, are easily beaten, according to most polls, by either Sanders or Clinton. If Republicans have a hope of winning in a general election, they need to actually unify behind a candidate who can win. It doesn't look like they are going to do it because I don't think that any of the egos of the current other candidates who are running are small enough for them to bow out and do what's better for their party, which is fine with me.

[02:55:36] BERMAN: It's fascinating, Maria. You have all of these candidates who more or less skipped Iowa, John Kasich, Chris Christie. Jeb Bush skipped the campaign altogether, it seems.

(LAUGHTER)

But can any of the guys come back in New Hampshire? Given the drama with Trump and now Cruz and Rubio, can any of them fight their way back in? It seems so hard.

CARDONA: I think it will be very difficult. I know that Republicans, especially the establishment Republicans, are, you know, sighing with relief because they think that Donald Trump, you know, the wind is out of his sails because he came in second. But he came in second. And he came in second in a state where we knew from a lot of polling from before this past week that he was not going to do well. He said himself that he wasn't even going to think of competing here, but he did and he came in second. Going into the other states, he has massive leads. So the question is, to your point, in New Hampshire, he could easily win in New Hampshire. But you have Kasich, you have Bush, and you have Christie, who have to do something in New Hampshire or they have to get out.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: All right, guys. Stand by.

We have a lot more coming up, including maybe, just maybe, some more results in the Democratic race. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)