Four days after the first vote of the Democratic primary race

we still don't know for sure who won

thanks to a catastrophic meltdown

of the app being used by volunteers to log the results.

What seems clear is that Pete Buttigieg and Bernie

Sanders are pretty much tied for first place.

But were the technological problems

all part of a wider conspiracy to keep Bernie Sanders down

as some of his supporters believe?

We've been asked exactly that question

by one of our viewers, Diego Arecha, who has asked:

"Is it possible that this Shadow" -

that's the name of the app - "was deliberately

programmed to malfunction in order to muddy the results

and help out one or more candidates?"

Well, this theory seems to stem from revelations

that both Joe Biden's campaign and that of Pete Buttigieg

have given money to Shadow, the company behind this app.

Could they therefore have been paying for the app

to malfunction and help out their candidates?

Well, actually, the explanation seems far simpler.

Both campaigns seem to have paid Shadow

for a different type of technology,

so-called peer-to-peer texting, which

allows their campaigns to send out thousands of text messages

to supporters and activists across the country all in one

go.

This kind of technology is going to be

very important for the 2020 campaign.

And Shadow is one of just three main companies that offer it

to Democratic candidates.

Moreover, the conspiracy theories don't quite stack up.

Arguably the person who would have stood most

to gain out of a clear result from Iowa

was Pete Buttigieg, whether he came first or second.

He was an outsider candidate who could

have done with the momentum boost of an unexpectedly

strong showing in the first result of the season.

The lesson I think that we should really

take from what happened in Iowa is

about the state of the Democrats' campaign technology.

Four years after the Clinton campaign was taken by surprise

by a more aggressive and more nimble Donald Trump's social

media campaign, many in the party worry that they are still

labouring under a patchy and occasionally faulty campaign

tech.

With nine months to go until the presidential election,

that should be the real worry for Democratic supporters.