diff --git a/docs/chat-template-readme.md b/docs/chat-template-readme.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..d127083d7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/chat-template-readme.md
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+# Chat Template Delimiter Handling Update
+
+## Overview
+This change modifies how delimiters are handled when applying chat templates in the request construction process for likelihood and multiple-choice based tasks. When `apply_chat_template` is set to `True`, the target delimiter is now set to an empty string instead of using the configured delimiter.
+
+## Background
+By default, the system uses a target delimiter (typically a whitespace " ") between the context and target text when constructing prompts. The full string is constructed as:
+```
+doc_to_text(doc) + target_delimiter + doc_to_target(doc)
+```
+
+While this worked well for base models where we wanted the model to predict a single whitespace followed by the answer, chat models have their own formatting conventions that handle spacing differently.
+
+## The Change
+- When `apply_chat_template=True`, the target delimiter is now empty ("") instead of the default whitespace
+- This prevents interference between chat template formatting and the default delimiter system
+- Particularly important for multiple choice tasks where the template itself handles spacing
+
+## Example
+```
+# Before (with default delimiter " ")
+<user>Question: What color is the sky?\nAnswer:<assistant> blue
+
+# After
+<user>Question: What color is the sky?\nAnswer:<assistant>blue
+```
diff --git a/lm_eval/api/task.py b/lm_eval/api/task.py
index f0be8db99a..56a1ad1601 100644
--- a/lm_eval/api/task.py
+++ b/lm_eval/api/task.py
@@ -449,6 +449,7 @@ def build_all_requests(
                 doc=doc,
                 ctx=fewshot_ctx,
                 metadata=(self.config["task"], doc_id, self.config.repeats),
+                apply_chat_template=apply_chat_template,
             )
 
             if not isinstance(inst, list):
@@ -1301,6 +1302,8 @@ def doc_to_image(self, doc: Any, doc_to_image=None) -> Union[int, str, list]:
     def construct_requests(
         self, doc: dict, ctx: str, **kwargs
     ) -> Union[List[Instance], Instance]:
+        apply_chat_template = kwargs.pop("apply_chat_template", False)
+
         aux_arguments = None
 
         if self.OUTPUT_TYPE == "loglikelihood":
@@ -1310,6 +1313,8 @@ def construct_requests(
         elif self.OUTPUT_TYPE == "multiple_choice":
             choices = self.doc_to_choice(doc)
             target_delimiter = self.config.target_delimiter
+            if apply_chat_template:
+                target_delimiter = ""
             if self.multiple_input:
                 # If there are multiple inputs, choices are placed in the ctx
                 cont = self.doc_to_target(doc)
diff --git a/lm_eval/evaluator.py b/lm_eval/evaluator.py
index d0c1a19a65..cea7d754c7 100644
--- a/lm_eval/evaluator.py
+++ b/lm_eval/evaluator.py
@@ -400,6 +400,11 @@ def evaluate(
 
     eval_logger.setLevel(getattr(logging, f"{verbosity}"))
 
+    if apply_chat_template:
+        eval_logger.warning(
+            "Chat template formatting change affects loglikelihood and multiple-choice tasks. See docs/chat-template-readme.md for details."
+        )
+
     # tracks all Instances/requests a model must generate output on.
     requests = defaultdict(list)
     # stores the amount to pad out reqs per req. type so that
diff --git a/lm_eval/models/huggingface.py b/lm_eval/models/huggingface.py
index 2097c2cfea..964dabb245 100644
--- a/lm_eval/models/huggingface.py
+++ b/lm_eval/models/huggingface.py
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 from pathlib import Path
 from typing import Dict, List, Literal, Optional, Tuple, Union
 
+import jinja2
 import torch
 import torch.nn.functional as F
 import transformers
@@ -1344,9 +1345,20 @@ def apply_chat_template(self, chat_history: List[Dict[str, str]]) -> str:
         """
         Method to apply a chat template to a list of chat history between user and model.
         """
-        return self.tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
-            chat_history, tokenize=False, add_generation_prompt=True
-        )
+        try:
+            chat_templated = self.tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
+                chat_history, tokenize=False, add_generation_prompt=True
+            )
+        except jinja2.exceptions.TemplateError:
+            eval_logger.warning(
+                "Failed to apply chat template. removing the system role in chat history."
+            )
+            chat_history = [msg for msg in chat_history if msg["role"] != "system"]
+            chat_templated = self.tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
+                chat_history, tokenize=False, add_generation_prompt=True
+            )
+
+        return chat_templated
 
     def get_model_info(self) -> dict:
         """
diff --git a/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/_template_yaml b/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/_template_yaml
index 9c404b0c5e..bc97d202f3 100644
--- a/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/_template_yaml
+++ b/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/_template_yaml
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ metric_list:
     higher_is_better: true
 num_fewshot: 4
 metadata:
-  version: 1.0
+  version: 2.0
 dataset_kwargs:
   trust_remote_code: true
 fewshot_config:
diff --git a/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/utils.py b/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/utils.py
index e3ebcf991b..607be3016c 100644
--- a/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/utils.py
+++ b/lm_eval/tasks/leaderboard/math/utils.py
@@ -17,6 +17,9 @@
     )
 
 
+INVALID_ANSWER = "[invalidanswer]"
+
+
 # taken from
 # https://github.com/wellecks/lm-evaluation-harness/blob/master/lm_eval/tasks/minerva_math.py
 def doc_to_text(doc: dict) -> str:
@@ -70,7 +73,10 @@ def process_results(doc: dict, results: List[str]) -> Dict[str, int]:
     unnormalized_answer = get_unnormalized_answer(candidates)
     answer = normalize_final_answer(unnormalized_answer)
 
-    if is_equiv(answer, doc["answer"]):
+    if answer == INVALID_ANSWER:
+        return {"exact_match": 0}
+
+    if answer.strip() == doc["answer"].strip() or is_equiv(answer, doc["answer"]):
         retval = 1
     else:
         retval = 0
@@ -112,17 +118,19 @@ def last_boxed_only_string(string: str) -> Optional[str]:
 
 
 def remove_boxed(s: str) -> str:
-    if "\\boxed " in s:
-        left = "\\boxed "
-        assert s[: len(left)] == left
-        return s[len(left) :]
-
-    left = "\\boxed{"
+    try:
+        if "\\boxed " in s:
+            left = "\\boxed "
+            assert s[: len(left)] == left
+            return s[len(left) :]
 
-    assert s[: len(left)] == left
-    assert s[-1] == "}"
+        left = "\\boxed{"
 
-    return s[len(left) : -1]
+        assert s[: len(left)] == left
+        assert s[-1] == "}"
+        return s[len(left) : -1]
+    except AssertionError:
+        return INVALID_ANSWER
 
 
 class timeout:
@@ -146,7 +154,7 @@ def is_equiv(x1: str, x2: str) -> bool:
     x1 and x2 are normalized latex string
     """
     try:
-        with timeout(seconds=5):
+        with timeout(seconds=1):
             try:
                 parsed_x1 = parse_latex(x1)
                 parsed_x2 = parse_latex(x2)
@@ -185,7 +193,6 @@ def is_equiv(x1: str, x2: str) -> bool:
 
 
 def get_unnormalized_answer(text: str) -> str:
-    INVALID_ANSWER = "[invalidanswer]"
     end_seq = "I hope it is correct."
     text += end_seq
     match = re.search(