Before we get into it, let's look at the numbers from last night. We'll start with the Democrats...
Obama, 38%
Edwards, 30%
Clinton, 29%
Richardson, 2%
Biden, 1%
Uncommitted, 0%
Dodd, 0%
Gravel, 0%
Kucinich, 0%
Other, 0%
So, not only does Hillary drop to third, but Obama beats her by 9 points. Hillary has to win New Hampshire or run the risk of Obama-mania swiffering the nation. Her campaign keeps pointing out that Mr. Clinton didn't win a contest until Georgia, but that comparision is flawed. Bill also didn't have a Barack Obama running.
Hillary has a huge black eye today and her campaign is scurrying today to try and ice it down.
When I heard last night that turnout was through the roof, that guaranteed a win for Barack Obama. His message of "change" and "hope" resonated with Iowans and they, in turn, showed up for him. Hillary tried to adopt the "change" mantra a couple of weeks back, but that backfired on her.
This win is huge for Barack. The questions now are these:
1. Can he capitalize on this win and keep the momentum going? New Hampshire doesn't listen to Iowa a whole lot and this could be hard for me to accomplish.
2. Does John Edwards gain any kind of bump from this? That remains to be seen. While he's hit 20% in the latest Zogby poll, he's still in third place. Edwards could very well get lost in the shuffle on Super Tuesday.
In the "Collateral Damage" department, both Chris Dodd and Joe Biden have dropped out of the race after obtaining 0% and 1%, respectively. The good news here is that ABC won't have to exclude them from the debates this weekend in New Hampshire and be the "bad guy."
On the Republican side, the numbers turned out this way:
Huckabee, 34%
Romney, 25%
Thompson, 13%
McCain, 13%
Paul, 10%
Giuliani, 3%
Hunter, 0%
Tancredo, 0%
Mike Huckabee has a convincing win in Iowa...but Iowa also has a significant number of those "Evangelical Christians" the MSM likes to talk about. They mobilized and they won it for him. Congrats to Governor Huckabee.
Romney's 25% is not insignificant, however. He fared far better than the candidate that people think is "the only true conservative in the race" (Thompson) and the unanimous choice of all the newspapers in New Hampshire (McCain). Romney's second place showing is solid and it gives him good ground coming into New Hampshire.
...something the Governor did at 3:45 this morning, by the way.
Mitt Romney also has something that none of the other candidates have: a deep pocket. Mitt can put up as much of his own personal wealth as he wants to compete and that means he can outspend the majority of candidates if he has to. He may be 4 points behind Johnny Mac in the latest Zogby, but Romney is not going away.
John McCain may have the lead, but McCain has to worry about two different half of the Granite State. The northern half--or, the New Hampsha Yankee Half, as I like to call it--loves John McCain. The first words out of their mouths when describing the Arizona Senator are usually, "He was a P-O-Dubya, you know." They see him as an American hero and they think he deserves the White House.
Then you have the southern half of the state--which is more "metropolitan" than the more rural northern half (if there is such a thing in this state). The people in this half of the state respect McCain for sure, but they're more judgmental regarding his record.
If John McCain loses ground, I think it's going to happen along the I-93 and Rt. 3 corridors in places like Manchester and Nashua and Salem. Sure, he's got every newspaper in the state supporting him, but there are still a high number of undecided voters (or "independent voters"--note the lower case "i"--as they prefer to be called here). This thing is far from over--even if there are only a few short days left.
We're now less than four days away from the New Hampshire Primary, with the first votes being cast at midnight on Primary Day.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
