Iowa Speaks - Will the Nation Listen?

Interesting results from the caucus last night that leaves us with no less that three plausible Democratic nominees for President (Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton) and five plausible Republican nominees for President (Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani - even though he was beaten by Ron Paul in Iowa).

On the Democratic side, there were three survivors. The winner - Barack Obama; second place - John Edwards; and third place - Hillary Clinton. The only real surprise for me was the margin of victory for Obama. His 38% was 8 points above John Edwards' second place finish, and 9 points above Hillary's third place finish. What's more impressive is the way that he won. The Democratic turnout was huge - over 100,000 more participants than was predicted. The new voters overwhelmingly went for Obama - without them he loses. Obama won the Democratic Party vote (76% of the turnout, broken down as follows: Obama 32%, Clinton 31%, and Edwards 23%), the 'Republican' vote (3% of the turnout, broken down as follows: Obama 44%, Edwards 32%, and Clinton 10%), and the Independent vote (20% of the turnout, broken down as follows: Obama 41%, Edwards 23%, and Clinton 17%).

On the Republican side, the winner was Mike Huckabee. That surprised me, because I thought that the Romney machine had the turnout covered. Speaking of turnout, it was about 20,000 more than was anticipated. As with the Democrats, the most interesting aspect of his win was the way that he won. Huckabee's 34% was 9 points higher than Romney's 25%. Fred Thompson came in third with barely more than John McCain - both of them had 13% of the vote. Ron Paul did finish with 10%, beating Rudy Giuliani's 3% - but Rudy didn't run in Iowa at all, and all Paul has going for him is that he's shown that he's able to raise money online. But the astounding thing is that Huckabee's victory can be attributed to one thing - the Evangelical Christian turnout. Fully 60% of those who turned out consider themselves to be Evangelical, or Born Again Christians. And 46% of them voted for Huckabee. My guess is that of the 20,000 non-anticipated participants, the majority were Evangelical Huckabee voters - and that they were his margin of victory.

The Iowa Caucus results boiled down to Liberal and Independent "new" voters turning out for Obama, and Evangelicals turning out for Huckabee. Obama's method of victory is replicable, especially in the the first primary in New Hampshire where the independent vote always carries the day. Edwards will stay alive, but just barely. He doesn't have the financial ability to compete in 50 states, and probably never will.

I don't think that Huckabee can replicate his success in Iowa. Iowa, among other things, is notoriously liberal. Although the media claims that the Evangelicals in Iowa are all social conservatives, I have yet to see an exit or entrance poll breakdown showing which type of Evangelical was the primary supporter of the Governor. When the media refer to "Evangelicals" or "Born Agains" they are most often referring to conservative Protestant Christians. That's only part of the Evangelical movement, which is actually broken down as Traditionalists, Centrists, and Modernists. It would seem to me that a Traditionalist Evangelical would have had major problems with the revelation that Huckabee earned quite a bit of money giving speeches on behalf of companies and groups involved in embryonic stem cell research and contraceptives. True social conservatives would have a problem with that, I would think.

Huckabee also doesn't have much money, although winning in Iowa is going to help fill his coffers quickly. He's not even competing in New Hampshire, so his next real test will be in South Carolina - and he doesn't have the same base there than he did in Iowa. Huckabee had a meteoric rise in Iowa, and I feel that a lot of his support came from people thinking "hey, finally we have one of us running". Given time, and critical press coverage - which he hasn't had yet - Republican voters are going to realize that aside from the religious qualification, he didn't govern in Arkansas as a conservative - social or otherwise. And on the other side, the same religious qualification that Huckabee rode to victory in Iowa will disqualify him with many moderate Republicans and most Independents.

But Huckabee did just do something very important last night - he leveled the GOP playing field. And with the specter of one candidate such as Mitt Romney steamrolling his way through the primaries gone, voters will pay much more attention to the issues, as opposed to the personalities, going forward.

This is going to be fun!