Implications of first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses
http://www.huanqiu.com 来源：新华网 网友评论条进入论坛 2008-01-07 10:25
DES MOINES, the United States, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- In a dramatic way, two leading candidates posing as "Washington outsiders" are declared winners of the Iowa caucuses for both major political parties, according to preliminary results of the first battle of the 2008 presidential race held here Thursday night.
Senator Barack Obama and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee have emerged as the victors in Iowa Thursday, winning the heavily contested presidential caucuses. The results show that the strategy of Obama and Huckabee in Iowa worked very well.
In a too-close-to-call contest like the Iowa caucues, voter turnout is the key.
Candidates from both parties were fighting over a small pool of voters in Iowa -- about 120,000 to 150,000 people are expected to vote in the Democratic caucuses, while 80,000 to 90,000 are likely to participate in the GOP contest.
That is a small chunk out of the nearly 3 million Iowans. So it could take relatively few people to give a candidate an edge -- and that's where the final push for votes comes into play.
Many of Obama's supporters are young students who have never gone to a caucus before and he has spent many times in trying to persuade them to come out to vote for him.
And it works. On the Democratic side, the voter turnout has nearly doubled this time, with an increasing number of voters supporting Obama.
For Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, he was focusing on the Evangelicals who compose 60 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa. As a result, although he did not have many funds in his war chest, he still got a lot of support.
The victory of Obama and Huckabee also reflects popular sentiment for change among Americans, most of them think the country is going on a wrong track.
"Change" is Obama's trademark while Huckabee shows a lot of difference with the Republican administration on a series of issues.
A survey found more than half of Democratic voters in Iowa said they were voting for the candidate who could bring about "change."
The Iowa caucus is the first step in selecting party candidates for the U.S. presidential election.
While the state is tiny and the voter numbers are low, political analysts say Iowa matters because it can make or break a candidate's chances in the other 49 states.
"If you can't make the top three on either side in Iowa, you can't get the party nomination," Terry Branstas, a former Republican governor of Iowa told Xinhua.
