Edwards 35
Obama 32
Clinton 25
Biden/Dodd/Richardson/Kucinich 8
Romney 26
Huckabee 22
McCain 21
Guiliani 13
Paul 12
Thompson 7
Your turn!
EDIT TO ADD: So the results are, roughly:
Obama 37.5
Edwards 30
Clinton 29.5
Richardson 2
Biden 1
Huckabee 34
Romney 25
Thompson 14
McCain 13
Paul 10
Guiliani 4
So, what does this mean?
1.) Well, obviously it’s big ups for Obama, for a number of reasons. Firstly, an enormous youth turnout – really, it’s massive. The legendary “candidate that brings in the youth vote that never appears” is nigh-mythical in politics, but Obama did it – in spades. Secondly, a massive initial victory in whiter-than-fuck Iowa effectively dismisses the “a black guy can’t get white votes” argument that quietly been making the rounds (especially, it seems, in black political circles – go figure). Finally, it’s just a good start right out of the gate, and that’s never a bad thing.
2.) Edwards’ campaign isn’t done, but his odds are very weak now. His campaign was predicated on winning Iowa and he didn’t do it. His concession speech, though, was a thing of genius, effectively arguing that with a top-two finish of himself and Obama, the primary season is about who can bring change, and Hillary effectively has been cast as the status-quo candidate. If the Clinton campaign collapses (and it could happen), the dynamic is in place for a two-man race. Still, that’s a lot of “ifs.”
3.) Clinton is in trouble. Her campaign was predicated on her being the inevitable nominee and she just came in third place in the first real test: not even second, but third. She needs an exceptional performance in New Hampshire to keep it together. If she doesn’t win New Hampshire she is in deep shit. If she only barely wins New Hampshire she is still in pretty deep shit. With just about all the non-big-three nominees dropping out to endorse Obama, she has a tough road ahead of her.
4.) Romney is in less trouble than people think. Yes, Huckabee winning Iowa is not great for Romney, but remember that the essential character of Romney’s campaign is that he’s every Republican’s inoffensive second choice, and getting a solid quarter of the vote right off the bat is good for him. The Guiliani and Thompson voters aren’t going to flock wholesale to Huckabee, after all.
5.) Speaking of Huckabee, yes, it’s a great early performance, but Iowa is littered with the ghosts of campaigns which had one great early performance then collapsed outright. Huckabee has very little institutional support and not a lot of money, and although he’s a very folksy speaker, he’s shit on details, which might even matter. The question for Huckabee is can he get more than one-third of the Republican electoral vote when the money and the foreign policy cons are against him, and I don’t know if he can do that.
6.) McCain probably wanted a few more points (fourteen points for Fred Thompson? Seriously?), but Iowa was always a distant afterthought for a campaign planning to really start by kicking ass in New Hampshire. That having been said, McCain needs to kick ass in New Hampshire even worse than Hillary does.
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Obama 32
Edwards 30
Clinton 28
Miscellaneous 10
Huckabee 24
Romney 22
McCain 20
Guiliani 15
Paul 13
Thompson 6
But note that I’m usually as good at prognosticating these events as I am at picking Oscars, so this is going to be an exercise in futility….
I wish I knew. I wanted to be there knocking on doors and making phone calls, but that didn’t work out for various reasons, so here I sit at work refreshing the feeds.
Everyone’s predicting turnout in the 150k neighborhood or higher, which seems insane to me given the date and comparisons to recent years. For a long time, higher turn out meant higher Edwards votes, but now lots of voices are predicting that it’s good for Obama. I can’t see that–he spent so much time courting college kids, most of whom are still scattered to the four winds with the date being so early–but I don’t have any on hand experience to be sure. But Iowa allows anyone to go to any caucus–and independents are strongly headed to the Democratic caucus, and even some Republicans. If the turnout is as large and Independent-heavy as predicted, that’s universally bad for Clinton, and, if the polls are accurate, better for Obama then Edwards. But polling Iowa is like herding cats.
Hillary’s downplaying expectations, which is a good sign on that front. Obama’s being quiet, aside to deny that they’ve got deals with Biden and Richardson to throw their supporters to him as a second choice. There’s no way to enforce that, even if a “deal” goes through, but even the rumor this early could be influencing voters. Most polls showed Edwards surging strongly when second choices were factored in, and this could eat into that.
Edwards is quieter still, because his plan has always been the ground game, and I can only assume that they’re working their asses off this morning getting people out. It propelled him to second four years ago, and it could vault him into first easily this year.
But I don’t know. And so, I am in the uncomfortable spot of having to Believe in something I can’t influence or experience. This gives me the creeps. And so I go off to refresh the feeds, and adjust the Edwards button I’ll be wearing on every trip out of the house between now and the Colorado caucus.
(Now, if only this nonsense breaks Iowa’s hold on first in the nation status, so we can finally start picking a president based on the opinions of anyone other than corn (read ethanol) fed rural white farmers who don’t look remotely like the average US citizen any more….)
Are you playing PoliClix?!?!
Huckabee and Obama- the Des Moines Register’s last poll will prove fairly accurate.
And yes, I’m prepared to look VERY stupid.
Not doing numbers, just doing order. Guessing the numbers’d make my head hurt.
Obama
Clinton
Edwards
Richardson
Biden
Dodd
Kucinich
Those last 3 probably won’t even place, given how it works Dem wise.
Huckabee
Romney
McCain
Paul
Thompson
Guiliani
Guiliani has given up Iowa (and New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and Michigan, and I think Nevada) in favor of the Big State Gambit. So I expect him to finish below people who actually showed up in Iowa. And Paul, somehow, is fighting Thompson for fourth in the polls, so I went with the polls there.
God dammit I hope Obama pulls it out. Hillary-Huckabee would be a fucking nightmare.
CNN’s called it: Obama and Huckabee.
Obama 45%
Edwards 41%
Clinton 41%
Richardson 2%
Biden 1%
Huckabee 31%
Romney 23%
Thimpson 13%
McCain 12%
Giuliani 11%
Paul 10%
Well, CNN’s projecting Obama by a few points over an effectively tied Clinton and Edwards. Edwards not being able to even do a clear second I think puts him out of the race (he may finish second, but so close to Clinton in third that he won’t distinguish himself in what was basically his all or nothing state).
Huckabee’s winning by a surprisingly large amount, and the spin currently going on by the others is “Iowa’s got lots of evangelicals, it’s not representative, etc” whereas his camp’s spin is “We’ve got grass roots, we’re going to continue to do well”. Romney now needs to get momentum back in New Hampshire. Thompson’s surprisingly strong, but still at 14% he’d need to improve considerably quickly. McCain at 13% ditto. And while Guiliani is supposed to have ignored Iowa and the upcoming small states on a big state strategy, I’d be concerned that he’s only getting 4%. It’s not like no one in Iowa’s ever heard of him after all, or that he’s not considered a significant candidate. And if you can only poll 4% given that people consider you a significant candidate, I think it means the campaign’s in real trouble.
Basically, Huckabee’s number here scares me. If he does second or better in New Hampshire, he’ll have momentum and by that point be in a 2-3 person race at most. Romney needs to do well in NH, or else he’ll have lost pretty much all momentum. McCain, Thompson, and Guiliani will at most have one at most really left in the race post-NH, and that’ll be whichever shows well (defined as over 25% as a minimum, preferably over 30%) in NH.
Obama: Big win. He needed this. The problem is, now if he doesn’t do as well in NH (and the odds are good that he won’t), he’s “sinking” and Clinton is “coming back”.
Edwards: Needed first. Drops out after South Carolina.
Clinton: Really wanted 1st/2nd. NH is now extremely important to *win*, not just place.
Everyone else on the Dem side: Thanks for coming, we have some lovely parting- er, no wait, we just tell you to go home.
Huckabee: Big win. If he gets NH, he’s the frontrunner. If he places in NH, he’s moved up to 1st-Tier.
Romney: Needed this. Drops in a few weeks.
Thompson: Needed this more. Drops after SC.
McCain: Didn’t need this. Beating Giuliani was good enough- but he NEEDS NH.
Giuliani: Must win something else soon.
Paul: Rhymes with “LOL”.
re: obama’s odds in NH
I read that Obama had a slim lead in NH as per the last poll. And I bet tonight’s results pull him ahead a bit more. What’s your reasoning here?
“The Democratic race in New Hampshire has tightened up, too. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has a 4-point lead over Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, 34 percent to 30 percent, among likely Democratic primary voters. But if you take into account the survey’s sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points, it’s a statistical dead heat.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/02/nh.poll/?iref=mpstoryview
What’s interesting to me is that the Republican vote is much more evenly split than the Democratic one. They really are going to tear themselves to pieces, and I for one am nothing but amused.
Dodd bailed tonight. I’ve been on his email list for a while now.
Dodd and Biden are both out after tonight.
Random blathering — love the new header, btw — and baseless assertions on far too little data from Iowa:
— Clinton’s finished. A great deal of Democratic support now fixates on finding a candidate who is “electable,” and tanking Iowa has shattered that illusion, like you said, of inevitability, of viability. There’s always been a concern that Clinton wouldn’t appeal to the undecideds, but when it’s clear that she barely appeals to her own party, that changes minds in a hurry. She’ll do better in New Hamster — statistically, she almost has to — but it’s not going to be good enough. She and Obama have been the two trailblazing touchstones in the race, and I expect her supporters to migrate reluctantly to Obama, en masse if she doesn’t decisively win NH.
— Did Fred Thompson just astonish the hell out of everyone? You immediately wonder if any of the voters had heard him speak, but then you look at Guiliani’s numbers and realize that well, someone’s been paying attention to the newswire. (I expected a Guiliani failure, but not a sub-Ron-Paul implosion, and I don’t think anyone else did, either.) Still, I don’t expect Fred to linger.
— John McCain, political zombie, walks the earth once more. This is the worst news of the night for the Dems, as I think he’s the only Republican with genuine bipartisan pull (yes, I’m ignoring Ron Paul, go ahead and Digg me down), but is he going to be able to represent a viable Republican alternative to the evangelicals? As long as the evangelical vote — as large as it may be — is split between Huckabee and Romney, he just might. And then Romney will play the immigration card, and that will be that.
— Yep, the theme of the night was definitely “change” — it’s always interesting how the incumbent party candidate can run on a platform of “change,” but Huckabee seems to be pulling it off, and you’re right, Hillary is seen too much as an agent of the status quo to be seen as a genuine force for change.
My thoughts:
This seems like more of a plus for Edwards than a minus–after months of “Will it be Hillary or Obama?”, suddenly he shows up as a player in the race. I don’t think he’ll get the nomination, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he winds up being able to make a place for himself on the ticket. (I’d certainly vote for Obama/Edwards. Then again, I’d vote for Jolie/Pitt if it meant we wouldn’t get another four years of Republican incompetence…)
Hillary’s f***ed. After months and months of “Hillary or Obama?”, she can’t even place a clear second? That’s an ugly thing to see right out of the gate.
I only found out last week that Giuliani was skipping the first five primaries. Had I known that, I would never have taken his candidacy seriously. Giving the other candidates a five-state head start isn’t just dim, it’s suicidal. And he’s not going to be able to run again in 2012; his whole appeal is tied into the way he ran New York during 9/11, and that’s receding further and further into memory as we speak. His ideal time to run was 2004, of course, but he didn’t have the balls to take on a sitting President, and now he’s paying for it.
I don’t see a single viable Republican candidate in the bunch. The election really is the Dems’ to lose. But that doesn’t mean they can’t lose it.