1. Romney has won the very low profile Wyoming caucuses. The Democrat contest is at a later date. The Republican contest was brought forward to between Iowa and New Hampshire in an attempt to get more attention paid to Wyoming. Although Wyoming got a deluge of direct mail from Republican candidates, there were hardly any campaign visits and there’s been very little media coverage, even of the result. But hey – they have managed to get a mention on this blog out of it 🙂
2. Latest New Hampshire polls:
- Suffolk University has Clinton 36, Obama 29, Edwards 13 / Romney 30, McCain 26, Huckabee and Giuliani tied on 11;
- Zogby has Clinton 32, Obama 28, Edwards 20 / McCain 32, Romney 30, Huckabee 12, Giuliani 9;
- CNN has Clinton 33, Obama 33, Edwards 20 / McCain 33, Romney 27, Giuliani 14, Huckabee 11;
- Rasmussen has Obama 37, Clinton 27, Edwards 19 / McCain 31, Romney 26, Huckabee 11, Giuliani 8.
In summary: overall the polls have Clinton ahead, Obama closing and Edwards clearly in third, with one poll telling a very different story of Obama being way ahead. (If the momentum is with Obama, he’s likely to do better than the polls currently show and we’ll never know which ones were correct as of today, but still the Telegraph should perhaps have done better than only report the one poll that is out of line from all the others.)
On the Republican side, it’s close between Romney and McCain, though as the momentum appears to be with McCain he looks the more likely winner at this point. Huckabee doesn’t seem to have got a big enough bounce post-Iowa to have got into serious contention. Giuliani’s poor showing, by the way, isn’t necessarily bad news for him as his strategy involves largely ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire whilst instead hoping to win big in some of the much larger states coming up.
UPDATE: Another new poll, this time with fieldwork from before, during and after Iowa also shows McCain ahead and Obama closing.



3 Comments
So after the Iowa caucuses, Obama has 16 delegates, Edwards 14 and Clinton 15 (even though Clinton came third). However there are still 12 super delegates who aren’t allocated by the polls so the “winner” could be anyone. Added to which there is the possibility that they don’t “count all the votes” because of the 15% threshold.
Meanwhile the republicans delegates are technically unpledged.
CNN page: http://tinyurl.com/23ll3h
There is the danger that the Iowa caucuses – which are not particularly democratic or representative – have a huge and disproportionate factor on the nominating process. Certainly Kerry’s surprise win in 2004 swung the whole process in his favour – which may be why they have attracted such importance this time
As I also found out that Florida’s primary won’t count for the Democrats you really do have to wonder whether this process is a complete nonsense.
It’s a bit like us saying no-one in Devon could vote in the leadership election!
Obama and McCain have stormed to victory in “Hartsfield Landing”
http://tinyurl.com/yqtqmr
Mind you last time Wes Clark won there so it may not be too good a predictor 🙂