Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Madness in Iowa; Next Stop - New Hampshire!

Well, once the official results were called at 2:40AM on January 4th, most people would have gone to bed.  As much as I wanted to do that, I somehow managed to stay up until 3:30 just to listen to the political pundits.  The Iowa Republican Caucus needs to step up their game for the next cycle.  It should not take over five hours to count ballots.

Anyway, here are the official results from the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus:

1st - Mitt Romney (30,015 votes) - 25%
2nd - Rick Santorum (30,007 votes) - 25%
3rd - Ron Paul (26,219 votes) - 21%
4th - Newt Gingrich (16,251 votes) - 13%
5th - Rick Perry (12,604 votes) - 10%**
6th - Michele Bachmann (6,073 votes) - 5%***
7th - Jon Huntsman (745 votes)- 1%*
 *Remember that Huntsman focused on New Hampshire.
** Around 11:45PM on 1/3/12, Rick Perry announced he would not go directly to South Carolina; instead, he would return to Texas to "reassess" his campaign (which means he will be leaving the race within the next 48 hours or so).
*** At 11:30AM on 1/4/12, Michele Bachmann "suspended" her campaign to become the GOP nominee.  She is the forth official candidate to drop out of the race to become the nominee for the Republican Party (after Pawlenty, McCotter, and Cain).
Hermain Cain, to my knowledge, earned at least five votes but since he is not longer in the race, it becomes a moot point.

Now, my predictions for the Iowa Republican Caucus looked something like this:

Ron Paul - 26%
Mitt Romney - 22%
Rick Santorum - 19%
Rick Perry - 13%
Michele Bachmann - 10%
Newt Gingrich - 7%
Jon Huntsman - 2%

So, a couple of things to keep in mind: I KNEW Huntsman would be in last place; I knew Romney would do better than Santorum and Perry would do better than Bachmann, I new Paul would get at least twenty percent, and I got at least five percentages either correct or within one or two percentage points. Also, I knew Bachmann would drop out due to poor results in Iowa - her birthplace. As previously stated in my post, "Another Debate...and they still don't get it" I predicted she would lose the Iowa Caucus...even though she won the Ames Straw Poll.

With only six days away from the New Hampshire Primary, I can only image what the wonderful citizens of the Granite State will do. Not that they need to do better than Iowa, but they will make their voices heard loud and clear in a way that will make Iowa look like a joke. Of course I'm being biased for New Hampshire...I worked there for the midterms! Haha!

Not that Santorum became so close to winning Iowa, a lot of Republicans are really taking a second look at his candidacy. I really think if he wants to main "a serious contender" for the GOP, he'll need to beat Paul in New Hampshire and beat Romney in South Carolina.  I'm still figuring out what to expect from New Hampshire but when I do, I'll post my predictions. I think the biggest thing Ron Paul has to worry about is getting the votes from the older voting constituents (mainly because the younger generation just flocks to him). Voters in New Hampshire are very particular about who they are going to vote for and I would guess at least 75% of them have their minds made up already. Unlike Iowa, nobody can tell them who to vote for at the last minute and expect them to vote for that candidate. New Hampshirites know their politics!  Okay, I think I have everything covered regarding Iowa; now it's time to return to the the news channels, data to read, etc.

Oh, by the way, Romney won Iowa over Santorum by only 8 VOTES!!! I never want to hear, "well my vote won't count" because EVERY VOTE COUNTS!!!

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