A Night of Surprises: What went down during the Iowa caucuses?

A historically close caucus and a surprise win for the Republican party made the Iowa caucuses full of shocking surprises.

The Iowa caucus results are in after a high-energy night fueled by rumors of foul-play, coin tosses and the waning smile of a smug Trump.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Before the Iowa caucus, polls showed presidential hopeful Donald Trump as the leading Republican candidate. Unfortunately for Trump, the results are in, and he was down 4 points from winner Ted Cruz.

Cruz's win raised eyebrows by several Trump supporters, as well as the businessman himself.

In an uncharacteristic move, Trump remained silent following the caucus results, only commenting with a few half-hearted words: 

"We will go on to get the Republican nomination, and we will go on to easily beat Hillary or Bernie. We finished second, and I have to say I am just honored... We're leaving tonight and tomorrow afternoon we'll be in New Hampshire, and that will be something special. It's going to be a great week... I think we're going to be proclaiming victory I hope."

After official declarations of Cruz's win, TIME reported Ben Carson's team has accused Cruz's team of spreading lies about Carson at the caucus site.

Carson's team alleges Cruz's campaign deliberately spread rumors that Carson dropped out of the race, leaving candidates to support others.

Last night Carson told reporters, "That is really quite a dirty trick. That's the very kind of thing that irritated me enough to get into this quagmire."

Carson campaign manager Ed Brookover stated, "To have campaigns come out and send emails to their caucus speakers suggesting that Dr. Carson was doing anything but moving forward after tonight is the lowest of low in American politics."

Rob Taylor, Carson's Iowa co-chair, simply responded, "This is horse****."

Iowa state director Ryan Rhodes showed reporters a text from Barbara Heki, a Mike Huckabee supporter, which read: "The Cruz speakers at our caucus announced Carson was suspending his campaign for a while after the caucus. They did this before the vote. Same thing happened at another caucus. Sounds like slimy Cruzing to me."

Carson's deputy senior strategist, Jason Osborne, read an email from their precinct chair in Muscatine reading: "The guy speaking for Ted Cruz right before the vote, he was supposed to be done, he announced that there was a story on CNN that Ben Carson was taking a break after Iowa, and then stated, 'So you might want to rethink wasting your vote on him.'"

Though the serious allegations have been presented to the media, Cruz's team vehemently denies them, with Cruz's spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, stating, "That's absurd."

For the Democratic caucus, another surprise - and possible scandal - surfaced when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was neck-and-neck with Bernie Sanders, with the race so close that things came down to a literal toss-up.

According to RT, David Schweingruber, a sociology professor at Iowa State University, was present at the caucus and explained, "A total of 484 eligible caucus attendees were initially recorded at the site. But when each candidate's preference group was counted, Clinton had 240 supporters, Sanders had 179, and Martin O'Malley had five (causing him to be declared non-viable).

The Democratic Party decided to fix the discrepancy with a coin toss. Clinton correctly called heads in an amazing six tosses, earning five of the eight remaining delegates.

Though there is currently an investigation to ensure Clinton won legitimately, the close race between Clinton and Sanders resulted in Clinton's unofficial victory of 21 delegates and Sanders with 20.

The questionable events to occur at the Iowa caucus has left a bad taste in the mouths of most Americans, who can only hope from here on out the battles will be clean and hard-won.

But the reality is that one scandal and the statistically outrageous coin toss will lead to the next; and with that, the American Caucus has officially begun.

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