Turnout was significantly higher in the caucuses than in the past, particularly on the Democratic Party side.
234,000 people turned out for the Dems, up about 175,000(!) from 2000.
112,349 people turned out for the GOP, up about 23,000 from 2000.
For the Dems, Hillary Clinton received 67,860 votes and came in 3rd overall.
This is 1359 votes less than Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney got combined (69219).
Many of the new voters in the caucuses were under 30 and these were very heavily skewed Democratic. This does not bode well for the GOP. The presumptive front-runner on the GOP side had been Rudy Giuliani as of a month ago and he polled roughly 4% of the GOP side, coming in 6th behind Huckabee, Romney, Thompson, McCain, and Ron Paul.
The evangelical Christian vote swung the GOP caucus over to Huckabee. While this group of voters is largely responsible for the rise of the GOP since 1994, this is the first time they could actually determine the nominee for the party. This would be an unmitigated disaster for the GOP as a whole. Evangelicals represent about 25% of the GOP base, which in turn is about 30% of the American electorate. If 8% of the overall American electorate determines the Presidential candidate for the GOP, we can rest assured that the moderates in both parties, the independents, and the corporate conservatives will swing away from the GOP as their interests simply do not match up with that of the evangelicals.
Huckabee is an interesting case in that he is a fundamentalist Christian but he also has some populist tendencies. This will broaden his appeal, but the money base of the GOP won't support him due to both of these reasons, so I doubt that he would have a shot at actually winning the Presidency were he to get the nomination. Frankly, if Iowa is an indicator (and it traditionally has been one) than I don't think any Republican currently in the race can win. Should we see a brokered GOP convention (a real possibility), and a new, viable candidate emerges from that, all bets are of course off. I think this is unlikely though.
2 comments:
I feel so disconnected over here. I haven't really made up my mind or even started to think. And the Democrats Abroad election is in less than a month. I have never, ever been this disconnected from an election.
Emily
I can understand that, don't forget that living in MA we get roundly ignored during the whole process because our votes are a foregone conclusion in the general election and in the primaries we vote too late to actually make a difference.
The only way to stay connected to the process here is to be obsessed with it. As much as I obsess over it and to a degree love being informed, I'm not sure that it is actually entirely healthy.
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