Interesting results- Chicks Dig Huckabee! Kucinich voters and Ron Paul voters are poor. McCain and Thompson voters are old. Only 26% of Republicans are under 45, while 40% of Democrats are. People who said events in Pakistan are "Very Important" had a preference for McCain but not Giuliani, who sucks ass in Iowa. Ron Paul voters don't give a fuck about Pakistan. Surprisingly, Richardson voters aren't too into it either. 69% of Republican caucusgoers are rural, which is astonishingly high even in Iowa- only 31% of the Democrats were rural. An amazing 29% of Republicans are from "Western Iowa", which is sparsely populated and very rural (Council Bluffs and Sioux Falls are the only large towns)- only 16% of Democrats were.
Full Entrance polls for Dems and Reps here at CNN.
The big news is that a stunning 44% or Republicans, with 78% of precincts reporting, told the party establishment exactly where they can go (hint: Dick Cheney told Patrick Leahy about it) by voting for Huckabee (34%) or Ron Paul (10%). And the Republican who is the most exact successor to President Bush, the Mayor of September 11, came in SIXTH (Hoorah!), with a pitiful 4% of the vote. Perhaps expecting the utter disaster, McCain spent the day campaigning in Florida.
I'm watching Huckabee on the podium now on MSNBC with Chuck Norris, his campaign manager, in the background. I figure maybe not being totally fake might actually be endearing to Midwestern Republicans. The other weird thing is that he's from the same part of Arkansas as Bill Clinton, is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and yet has a totally flawless Midwest accent. It's almost as good as Obama's. How did that happen? And right now he just made a statement dissing "the ruling class". I don't even think John Edwards would use that term to talk about the Republican Party establishment. It sounds almost British.
They're claiming the Democratic turnout, in Iowa, was more than twice the Republican turnout.
Update from a bit later (11:06): Obama does seem to have some younger people behind him on the dais. Change that on the Midwest accent part- it seems like he's been taking lessons in diction from Oprah. He said his story "could only happen in the United States of America". This is definitely true because we have just seen that in Kenya, when a Luo runs for President, they get out the tear gas, water cannons, and flaming tires.
Dodd and Biden have reportedly dropped out of the race.
(11:36): In a triumph for the rights of persons born with ambiguous genitalia, an MSNBC graphic on the screen describing the gender of Hillary's voters had three bars, for men, women, and a third unlabeled bar which said "0%". Unfortunately, it appears nobody who wasn't a man or a woman voted for Hillary. Their entrance poll also claimed that 60% of Republican voters were "evangelicals" which I think still think is flawed because it confused a shitload of mainline Lutherans. Guys, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the LARGEST denomination in the stste of Iowa, is not a fundie church. They're not going to bend to American Religions of the Month (except for those other Lutherans, the wacky Missouri Synod) because they are more conservative than that-
Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,
Ein' gute Wehr und Waffen;
Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not,
Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.
(11:55) Keith Olbermann is talking to Huckabee, and Huckabee just dissed those who profess a religion and don't practice it. I wonder if this is a slam of Romney's habit of contradicting LDS doctrine, as seen in this link on Salt Lake City's Channel 4, on a regular basis when he makes statements about religion?
And finally, MSNBC reported the Democratic turnout to be 238,000. With 86% of precincts reporting, 104,025 Republicans have voted, not including those who might have voted for candidates not in the seven listed, such as Alan Keyes, who has gotten at least one vote in Plymouth County, which has 72 African-Americans out of a population of 24,849, north of Sioux City.
(12:23) The Republican establishment is now formally pissed. This from the Club for Growth, a corporatist PAC which whacks Republican candidates who get out of line: (My snide remarks in
Club for Growth PAC: Statement on the Iowa caucus results
1/3/2008
Press Contact—Nachama Soloveichik
202.887.7039
Washington – In light of the Iowa caucus results tonight, Club for Growth President Pat Toomey issued the following statement:
“The Club for Growth PAC urges New Hampshire voters to reject Mike Huckabee and his big-government policies next Tuesday. Republican voters should nominate a leader who will return the Party to the principles of economic conservatism, not an economic liberal who wants to be the John Edwards of the Republican Party." [Yikes!! John Edwards! Next you'll be calling him the Antichrist, but that won't fool those other Lutherans, the fundie Missouri Synod,
“Mike Huckabee has a proven track record of increasing taxes and spending as governor of Arkansas, opposes school choice,
(1:07): The Democratic establishment has reason to be pissed as well. CNN claims to have 100% in on the Democratic side, and they say Hillary came IN THIRD (Hoorah!). Mysteriously, they also project that she will get one more delegate than Edwards. Perhaps CNN knows something mysterious about the Iowa Democratic Party that we don't... They are also projecting that Ron Paul got two delegates. Guess who will be locked out of the arena this summer in Minneapolis...
There is a report that in polls Republican caucusgoers listed "immigration" as their #1 issue. The 2000 Census reported a massive increase in Latinos in Iowa- they were a huge 3.8% of the state's population. Only 3.3% of Iowa's population was born outside the US. Marshalltown, a town of 26,000 people, was 12.6% Latino, but according to the Wikipedia entry, "
In fact, 69% of Republicans were from "rural areas", not "cities" or "suburbs" (was this self-reported or based on the caucus locations?), so you wonder- are they worried there won't be enough Mexicans to help around the farm?
(2:04) I noticed a strange anomaly watching the results come in on CNN and a strange thing happened earlier. Giuliani, for about a half an hour, surged from 4% to 10%. When the anomaly disappeared, the vote total for Giuliani went down, which means there was an error. It appears that a commenter to CNN's website found that Giuliani had 49% of the vote in Linn County, which contains the city of Cedar Rapids and thus is by Iowa standards a major county (nearly 200,000 people). The guy claimed it was fixed four minutes later. I guess somebody at CNN entered an extra digit.
I guess Rush Limbaugh hates Huckabee, too. His show isn't on until tomorrow, of course, but he launched into a 3615-word uninterrupted anti-Huckabee rant about how he was no Ronald Reagan on his show today, in which he also bashes the other popular Republican in America, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Isn't it great to use the Word Counter in another window?) Highlights:
Reagan was a huge law-and-order governor as well. He put down the riots on college campi from '66 to '74, he didn't release hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of criminals. If you want to compare him to a California governor on that stand, compare him to Governor Schwarzenegger, who is preparing to release a bunch of criminals on the basis of budget cuts.
Governor Huckabee raised more taxes in ten years in office as governor than Bill Clinton did in his 12 years as governor.
Huckabee said on The Tonight Show last night if you can't stand the sight of your own blood, don't get into politics. This was before he played the guitar or maybe it was after he played the guitar. Clintonesque. Clinton played the saxophone on Arsenio Hall; Huckabee last night played the guitar, the bass guitar.
(Next Day): I noticed something totally bizarre about the CNN entrance polls. While they asked the Republicans if they were "born again" or "evangelical" (see above for why this is stupid), they didn't even ask the Democrats the same question. I guess the dorks at the mainstream media think all white "born again" or "evangelical" Christians are Republicans.
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