Iowa Winners and Losers and What It Means For The Race

The first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses happened just a week ago, but the results will cast a shadow on the election as a whole. The candidates have been counting down the days, the hours, and even the minutes until it was their turn to suspend their campaign for the presidency. Who would have believed last year that at this time we would be saying, “I can’t believe Donald Trump didn’t win Iowa and I can’t believe Hillary Clinton beat the old socialist Bernie Sanders.”

It has been quite a race so far, and it’s only one caucus under way. On the Democratic side, even with Hillary winning the day, it’s Bernie Sanders who has to feel pretty good. Bernie likes to tell his supporters, “I started out 50 points behind in Iowa.” In an amazing comeback, the Vermont senator has at times been leading. Polls show he might have pulled off an upset with even greater voter turnout.

Bernie now looks ahead to New Hampshire, which the polls show he will win by double digits. He has made frequent visits to New Hampshire, neighboring his home of Vermont and with a similar political climate.

   Does Iowa mean Hillary Clinton is going to lose the White House or even the Democratic Nomination? Of course not. The problem for her campaign is that the Iowa results only give Sanders momentum. At this point, Sanders is able to tell his supporters that it is going to be a landslide win in New Hampshire and a close loss in Iowa. This would indicate more momentum that could carry him into a close loss, or even a close win, in many more primaries, which would hurt her in the general election.

At this point, Clinton needs to mobilize her campaign-more voter turnout and more ads. If she can get the ball rolling and win big on Super Tuesday in a month, the country might just snap back to the reality that Bernie Sanders is a (democratic) socialist, a taboo designation in American society, whereas Hillary Clinton is a longtime politician who prepared for 2008 for years and 2016 since 2008. If she starts building a larger lead, she may be able to win the nomination by a more comfortable margin. She can now focus her efforts on Sanders, has O’Malley has dropped out.

Martin O’Malley. Who? Exactly. That was apparently the impression of 99% of Iowa voters last night. Really the question is, what took so long? O’Malley, the Maryland governor, was polling at about 3% nationally, 1% in Iowa. That little bit could help Bernie pull off a narrow victory. In fact, I think that if O’Malley had dropped out before Iowa and all his voters went to Bernie, MSNBC could be telling a very different story right now. That is Hillary’s second challenge—take back O’Malley supporters and more importantly—take back moderate Democrats. She has her work cut out for her.

As for the GOP Race, Ted Cruz won big over Trump, largely because of his large Evangelical base. Trump (we all know his first name) came in second, but Rubio had a “big win”—only 1% behind Trump. This is “huge” for Rubio and Cruz. It showed America that Trump is not undefeatable, as he implies by citing recent poll numbers.

Trump, however, is leading by a very comfortable margin in New Hampshire. It may be a smaller margin in the final result, but Trump is likely to win big there.

The nation seems to believe that it is becoming a 3-man race. Yes, Kasich and Christie will likely do well in New Hampshire, but it is highly unlikely they are in it for the long haul. Bush may have had his moments, but the polls still show him in the single-digits.

Carson’s campaign took a wild dive in the late fall, plunging 20 points before he fired his campaign manager. Fiorina and Paul seem to average about 3% in most states.

Gilmore? Yes! He is still in it! With only twelve Iowan Republican votes, Gilmore believes that he can pull off an upset in New Hampshire, unlike many other contenders who have recently dropped out.

Santorum and Huckabee joined Jindal, Walker, Perry, Graham, and Pataki recently in the field of dropouts. No surprise there, except that Huckabee did not even wait until the end of the Caucus.

Every Republican besides Trump, Cruz, and Rubio may have already lost this race. The field is going to start narrowing as it already has. Perhaps only five Republican campaigns will last until the middle of March.

Until then, New Hampshire is today, and Nevada and South Carolina are right around the corner.