And so it begins…
So, for those of you following politics yesterday was a big day, the day of the Iowa caucuses. For those of you who don’t follow politics, ignore the rest of this post as it won’t matter to you at all.
With the first caucus gone, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee were the winners of Iowa. What exactly that means is really up to your opinion of the importance of the Iowa primary. As I’ve seen some columnists put it, “Winning Iowa doesn’t mean winning the nomination, except when it does.” Or, to pit it another way, Iowa doesn’t really matter and isn’t really a predictor of the final results except when it is.
A better way to look at Iowa in my opinion is that it basically weeds out those candidates who lack the financial and popular support to run a full campaign. Several candidates sunk huge amount of political funds into the state in the hopes of performing well enough to attract supporters and recoup those investments. It remains to be seen how that goes with this election.
For those of you interested in the primary and caucus dates, here is a list of the upcoming ones:
3rd of Jan: Iowa
5th of Jan: Wyoming (Rep)
8th of Jan: New Hampshire
15th of Jan: Michigan
19th of Jan: Nevada; South Carolina (Rep)
26th of Jan: South Carolina (Dem)
29th of Jan: Florida
1st of Feb: Maine (Rep)
5th of Feb: Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa (Dem), Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho (Dem), Illinois, Kansas (Dem), Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana (Rep), New Jersey, New Mexico (Dem), New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia (Rep)
As you can see, after the 5th of February half the US will have had their primary caucus and we’ll have a better idea of which direction the election is going in. Given the sheer political power of some of the states caucusing that day (California & New York) we might very well see it decided then.
Of course Oregon doesn’t caucus until the 20th of May, so by the time I get to have a say in things it will pretty much all be over. Or to put it another way: Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands will all have a say in the election before I’ll get to.
And now, collected here for your reading pleasure (and for the fun game of ’spot the bias’) a set of assorted links from various news websites talking about the Iowa results and the candidates heading to New Hampshire:
US contenders eye next key state (BBC)
What do the Iowa results mean? (BBC)
Huckabee, Obama carry momentum into New Hampshire (CNN)
Analysis: Huckabee up, Clinton down heading to Granite State (CNN)
Primary Results for Iowa (CNN)
How much will Iowa help Edwards? (Newsweek)
Comeback Kid, Take Two? (About Hillary) (Newsweek)
The Status Quo Lost (Newsweek)
‘Quirky’ Iowa an accurate predictor? (MSNBC)
Iowa winners seek repeat in New Hampshire (MSNBC)