Iowa Caucus Recap…Winners and Losers
The fraction of the 91% ethnically white Iowa has spoken and the winners are Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani were the biggest losers considering they both had the worst case scenarios happen to them. Hillary finished 3rd amongst dems behind Obama and John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani finished 6th amongst republicans with 4% of the votes.
Now I know Rudy Giuliani didn’t spend much energy on Iowa but 6th place?!? Are you kidding me? He finished behind Ron Paul! And Ron Paul didn’t just beat Rudolph; he crushed him with his 10%!
Fred Thompson finished 3rd and why not considering he didn’t do much. Mitt Romney did himself a disservice by doing too much; he massively out spent Huckabee and finished second. During the caucuses I was watching CNN’s coverage and Anderson Cooper said that it seems the more that people get to know Mitt Romney the more they seem to dislike him.
The same can certainly be said for Hillary Clinton. If Hillary didn’t stop into so many diners in Iowa, perhaps she would have won the caucus. All it takes is pissing off a few Iowa diners and that’s it, presidential campaign down the toilet!
Iowa is made up of about 3 million people but only about 350,000 people actually caucused. And not 350,000 on each side, that’s the total amount that caucused. So let’s be clear, it’s not Iowa that’s crucial to our presidential elections, it’s actually about 12% of Iowa!
Image from the NY Times.
2 Comments
I’m always hesitant about the Iowa results. Remember, Ronald Reagan came in second during the 1980 Iowa caucus, and Bill Clinton only received 3% of the caucus in ‘92.
Matt-Very true. Thankfully the 12% of Iowa that caucuses doesn’t totally decide our elections. But remember Howard Dean? RAH!! hehe