Early Thoughts on Iowa Results

For the Democrats, I was surprised how far ahead Obama pulled as the results came in. An eight-point win was much larger than pretty much anyone was expecting. Edwards finished barely ahead of Hillary, though the number of delegates to the national convention should come out even, and it might be spun as a tie for second. Worth remembering is that for the Democrats in Iowa, raw vote totals are not reported, only the total number of county convention delegates selected, so results that close say very little about whether more voters supported Clinton or Edwards. Given the ability of supporters of minor candidates to switch their votes, it seems likely that Clinton had more supporters in the first round than Edwards. Also, contrary to what I posted previously, it seems the second choice for more of these minor candidate supporters ended up being Obama. I just pass along what I hear. I watched part of the results on FNC, and saw Bill Kristol say that Obama has a better than even shot at the nomination, though Clinton still has a shot, and Edwards has almost none. This seems like a sound verdict to me, especially given the margin he won by. Less sound were statements along the lines of "two-thirds of caucus-goers voted against Hillary"; saying that the same cold be said of Obama or Edwards is overly simplistic, as there was something to the "anti-Hillary" vote talk, but there are still supporters of Obama and Edwards for whom Hillary is their second choice.

On the Republican side, Huckabee blew out Romney, no question about it. This damages Romney in New Hampshire, where McCain is likely to win now. Essentially, I think Romney's campaign is going to sink like the Titanic, with Iowa as the iceberg. Many Ron Paul supporters said their support would show through in Iowa, and, well, it didn't. They did manage to win one county (Jefferson), though, the only candidate besides Romney and Huckabee to do so. The soft third-place finish for Thompson is not good. It's certainly better than the fourth place he could have fallen to (and some pre-caucus polls showed him in), but, still, not good. On the other hand, if you consider the good press McCain has been getting, and the lousy press Thompson has been getting (rarely substantive, mostly criticizing his campaigning, or late reports that he would drop out after Iowa, which tend to depress support and which his campaign vigorously denied). Looking at what has become a longshot campaign for Thompson, I have to think a knockout of Romney is better for him than a knockout of Huckabee, because while it's believed that the evangelicals that make up Huckabee's base are more likely to support Fred than any other candidate, Mitt has been trying to claim the conservative mantel in this race, and has built his support on being the "electable conservative" and Thompson is really the only other candidate who can claim to be a conservative (a more solid claim that Romney, based on track record), leaving the whole "electablity" issue, which I think he could conquer if he'd start reaching 20% finishes rather than low-teens. McCain is helped because Romney is hurt. Giuliani is hurt on the one hand because he's an afterthought of the newscycle, but helped on the other because Iowa and New Hampshire will almost certainly be split (and, although nobody's really paid attention to it, Wyoming could go to a third candidate (Romney is the only major candidate with real campaign organization in the state, and Fred Thompson is the only other major candidate to visit, although I haven't seen any recent polls, and results could be screwy as Duncan Hunter has been active there and Ron Paul supporters are running wild (though, once again, lacking in polls, I'm inclined to believe that they're louder than their numbers would indicate, as they are everywhere else))). Huckabee is obviously helped by winning the state, and winning it convincingly. So, there you go. A nifty map of Iowa GOP results by county is available here. The biggest news on the GOP side has to be the damage to the Romney campaign.

In other news, Chris Dodd has decided to drop out. Or, as Chevy Chase used to say on SNL, "In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."