Iowans expected to know Monday night who won the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus.

But when no final results were released that night, it seemed reasonable to expect the winner would be announced Tuesday morning.

That didn’t happen, and by the end of the day Tuesday state party leaders released just 62 percent of the results.

So more than 24 hours after the last caucus-goers went home after declaring their presidential preference, no one knows who actually won.

There are many words to describe this situation. Sad, pathetic, and ridiculous are among them.

One is left to wonder how thoroughly state Democratic leaders actually tested the troublesome app before caucus night.

When the final results are at last released, there’s likely to be a shadow of a doubt about them. Will anyone believe that they are the true and accurate final results?

Meanwhile, some of the presidential contenders may take advantage of the murky situation to declare victory.

Perhaps the worst result of this debacle is that it will play right into the hands of people in the other 49 states who don’t think Iowa should be the first state in the nation to pass judgment on the presidential candidates. Every four years there is a tougher and tougher fight to maintain Iowa’s first in the nation status. That is a problem for Republicans and Democrats alike.

In a worst case scenario, the present mess could lead to Iowa losing its coveted first in the nation status. That would just about be tragic. Decades worth of the proven wisdom of Iowa voters would be downgraded. To make matters worse, the millions of dollars in economic impact the caucuses have would also be lost.

We demand that Iowa Democratic leaders resolve this situation quickly and make sure it never happens again.