Thursday, January 3, 2008

Iowa Preview and Analaysis!

I'll save everyone a whole lot of time. Here's everything you need to understand tonight's results. Don't worry about which issues resonated with Iowa voters, or Huckabee's non-negative negative campaigning, or anything else, because it won't matter tomorrow. Unless, of course, I'm wrong.

Politics, especially the game of nominating Presidential candidates is about expectations. You can win a primary by exceeding expectations, you can lose by falling short of them.

Accordingly, Iowa has become more important than usual, since the polls are so close among leading candidates in both parties, everyone who matters (except McCain and I suppose Giuliani) has a reasonable expectation of winning. So, losing, even by a little will be falling short of expectations. For Edwards and Huckabee even more, a loss will be devastating. Romney and Clinton can recover in a couple of days if they get decisive wins in New Hampshire. Obama could also recover with a decisive win in New Hampshire, but I have a hard time seeing Obama winning New Hampshire unless he wins (or at least come very close to winning in Iowa.

On the Republican side, McCain has already won Iowa.

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