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
Comments
You write that “the big news” out of Iowa is that “Democrats have three leaders that they are comfortable with. Republicans, on the other hand, appear to have a very fractured party.”
In the very next sentence, you write that “On the Democratic side, older voters preferred Hillary Clinton; younger ones, Barack Obama; and late boomers, John Edwards.”
I wonder how you can possibly reconcile those two concepts. Democrats being divided so clearly into “older voters,” “younger voters,” and “late boomers” sounds to me a lot like they are fractured. So how on earth do these results show that they are “comfortable” with any of the three?
(I am not arguing your point about Republicans, although you certainly don’t do any analysis here explaining why the Iowa caucus results show the factures in that party.)
Democrats have three leaders they are very comfortable, but the mainstream media has never been comfortable with more than two, and they are driving Edwards out of the race before the nations Democrats have any say in the matter. It is a travesty. Go ahead and read/Google any major media website, and you will hear nary a peap about Edwards, other than he doesn’t have the money to win (funny how that didn’t matter for Huckabee, but logic is irrelevant to the talking heads).
Hi, Tom!
I was basing the comment about three viable candidates on the fact that three candidates polled pretty close to one another, taking 90+ percent of the vote in the process.
On the Republican side, it takes almost all the candidates (6) to get to 90+ percent of the vote — that suggests the party is still fractured. (But because it’s a winner-take-all primary, Huckabee gets all the votes.)
I don’t think the demographic comment shows fracturing — simply where “most” of the support lies. I picked a different demographic for the Rs — religious affiliation. Why these two (age/religion)? Because when I wrote the piece, that’s all the analytical data I could find!
Hi, Jeff –
I think that you are correct that the media — particularly TV — are more comfortable with either/or situations (not just in presidential politics).
I hope Edwards does well in NH. Polls show Hillary and Obama as the leaders there. Polls in Iowa had shown the three of them pretty equal.
What the polls cannot show is who someone will switch their vote to on a 2nd balloting. Perhaps that was more important in Iowa than in NH (Dodd has officially dropped out, for example) but it’s still a factor that cannot be calculated easily.
What the MSM also fail to note is by how much Edwards was outspent. OTOH, he’s been in Iowa for most of the past year. And on another note, Obama is from neighboring Illinois …. and Iowa tends to weigh in favorably on regional candidates. See What can we learn from 2004: http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/01/03/iowa-what-can-we-learn-from-2004.htm
Have updated the article to reflect these clarifications!
I feel, personally, that the last thing this country needs in a leader is religious bias. We are embroiled in a multi-country conflict in the Muslim center of the world, after all. What we need is logic, impartiality, and a drive to end this ridiculous War on Terror.
On another note, if good ol’ Huckabee wins the presidency, we can say good bye to scientific advancements in the field of genetic research, as well as equal rights for gays and lesbians, who, I might add, are U.S. citizens as well.
I dont see anything wrong with the way the article was written. I heard this morning also about the different ways ppl voted. It was said that more women voted for Baraca than they did for Hilary. Those things add up and it helps to see who’s pulling for who. It has always been that way. It was also mentioned that you would see Oprah’s effect in South Carolina more than anywhere else. Those are opinions from my local media radio station who have been following the race.
Thanks for the clarification. I still don’t think I agree that “Democrats have three leaders that they are comfortable with” (I believe many of them are comfortable with Obama but could never be comfortable with Clinton — and vice-versa, for example) but now I understand your argument. Much appreciated.