Reflections on Iowa
The big news -- the news that that horse-race driven MSM ignore -- is this: Iowa revealed that Democrats have three leaders that they are comfortable with. Republicans, on the other hand, appear to have a very fractured party.
Added: The top three candidates Democratic candidates polled pretty close to one another, accounting for 90+ percent of the record vote in the process. But on the Republican side, it takes almost all the candidates to get to 90+ percent of the vote; this illustrates that the party is fractured.
On the Democratic side, older voters preferred Hillary Clinton; younger ones, Barack Obama; and late boomers, John Edwards. What this might mean in a general election is unclear; younger voters preferred Howard Dean, too, as well as John Kerry.
Almost two-thirds of Republicans polled before the caucus said that they were evangelical Christians, a group that is clearly a small minority in the rest of the country. (Evangelical Christians comprise between 8 percent and 35 percent of the US population, depending upon the criteria used to define the word.)
Two-thirds of the Republicans at the caucuses said they want a presidential candidate who reflects their religious beliefs. Half of those people voted for Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister who does not believe in evolution. Mitt Romney was a distant second; Fred Thompson and John McCain were in a virtual tie for a distant third, with Ron Paul not far behind. Rudy Giuliani was not even in the shadows. (But because it’s a winner-take-all primary, Huckabee gets all the delegates.)
Two questions: how much did Oprah help Obama .... and, in an age of Blackberries, iPhones, Palms and Blackjacks, what effect did the running total of precinct results have on the Democratic outcome? There is a reason we don't start broadcasting election results from the east coast before polls close on the west coast. Here's hoping NH waits until polls are closed before revealing results.
Watch the post-caucus speeches:
- Clinton, Full Speech (ad) and CNN (no direct link)
- Edwards, Full Speech
- Guiliani, From NH
- Huckabee, Full Speech (ad), MSNBC Interview (ad)
- McCain, From NH
- Obama, Full Speech
- Romney, Full Speech (ad)
Estimated delegate count
Democrats (estimate)
- Clinton - 14 delegates
- Edwards - 15 delegates
- Obama - 16 delegates
Republicans (estimate)
- Huckabee - 17 delegates
- McCain - 3 delegates
- Paul - 2 delegates
- Romney - 12 delegates
- Thompson - 3 delegates