01/03/2008
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Iowa: Lessons Learned?
Created by
Laura Leslie
posted at 2008-01-03 23:29 | Last modified 2008-01-04 12:53
posted at 2008-01-03 23:29 | Last modified 2008-01-04 12:53
Here’s what I learned tonight:
- Both Obama and Huckabee have that je ne sais quoi that gets people out to the polls. LOTS of people.
- Younger voters may play a bigger role in ‘08 than before. Tim Russert says young voters accounted for 17% of Iowa’s turnout in ’04. Tonight, they made up more than 20%. (That’s an 18% increase.) Young voters tripled the overall turnout at many Iowa precincts - and a whole lot of them voted for Obama. We’ll have to see if that holds true in NH, too.
- First-timers may matter, too. 56% percent of Dem caucus-goers tonight had never gone to a caucus before. They overwhelmingly chose change over experience – and they overwhelmingly picked Obama, too.
- Women voters will matter more than ever. They turned out like crazy in Iowa, making up 57% percent of Dem caucusgoers. (And more of them voted for Obama than for Hillary.)
- Republicans may be in trouble in ’08, if tonight’s any indication. Dem caucus turnout doubled that of the GOP, largely because of independent voters, who went deep blue. (BTW, Bush won Iowa in 2004.) Among Dems, Obama has 32 percent support. With independents, his support went from 32 to 38 percent.
- Voters are motivated. The number of Iowa dems who showed up to caucus is estimated at 236,000 – 89% higher than ‘04. Republicans estimated 80,000 caucus-goers, but counted more than 110,000 votes - 25% higher than their last caucus in 2000.
- It ain’t over. Out of some 2400 state delegates to be had on the Dem side, the margin between 2nd and 3rd place was 7 – less than a half-percent of the total. On the GOP side, out of about 110,000 votes, just over 300 – a quarter-percent - separated third-place Thompson from fourth-place McCain. And fifth-place Ron Paul was just over 3% behind them.
