The Iowa caucuses defied predictions with two surprise winners in Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, writes Denis Stauntonin Des Moines, Iowa
When Diana Myers walked into the gym hall at Edmunds Elementary School for the Democratic caucus in Des Moines' Precinct 66, she still hadn't settled on which candidate to support. Barack Obama's campaign was offering chocolate chip cookies on one side of the hall, the John Edwards and Hillary Clinton teams had each occupied a corner and Bill Richardson's supporters were assembling beneath a basketball hoop.
"Every election before, the candidates never excited me," Myers said. "Now all of a sudden I've got three all at once. I've got what I wanted but now it's too much."
While Myers was making up her mind, the hall started filling up and it was soon clear where most of the traffic was heading. By the time the caucus was called to order at 7pm, Obama supporters occupied almost half the room, dwarfing the Clinton and Edwards groups.
The caucus captain, a young news director at a local radio station, announced that 248 people were present, more than twice the turnout four years ago. For a candidate to be viable, they would need the support of at least 15 per cent of those present - or 37 people.
Clinton had just 38 - including Myers, who was swayed by an argument about the New York senator's health care plan - and Edwards had 37. Obama had 128 - more than half of the entire caucus.
Ethnically diverse and younger than most Iowa precincts, Precinct 66 was always going to be fertile ground for Obama, but watching this forest of hands rising for him, it was clear that something quite extraordinary was happening.
Similar events were unfolding at caucuses throughout the state, as voter turnout swelled beyond the most extravagant predictions. Four years ago, 125,000 Democrats went out to caucus and most pundits expected about 160,000 this time, although some suggested the number could reach 200,000.
On Thursday night, close to 240,000 people took part in the Democratic caucus - most of them for the first time and many of them former independents and Republicans. These new voters, who included an unprecedented number under the age of 30, swept Obama to victory, leaving Edwards and Clinton far behind.
At the HyVee hall in downtown Des Moines later that night, Obama told a rapturous crowd of more than 3,200 supporters that they were witnessing a defining moment in American history.
"They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do."
A FEW BLOCKS away, at the Fort Des Moines Hotel, Clinton's supporters looked ashen as they absorbed the shock of a third place finish for the candidate long regarded as the almost inevitable Democratic nominee.
Until a few hours before the caucus, Clinton's campaign managers believed that their meticulous ground game would deliver a victory in Iowa that would set her on an unstoppable path to the nomination.
They had identified 82,000 committed supporters and were confident that nearly all of them would actually brave the icy temperatures to attend a caucus. They were right - almost 70,000 people supported Clinton on Thursday night, more than enough to secure first place according to most turnout predictions.
What changed everything was Obama's success in transforming the huge, enthusiastic crowds that for months have greeted him everywhere in Iowa, and throughout the US, into real electoral support.
In the final days before the caucus, attendance at Obama events - already much greater than for any other candidate - had doubled. His campaign argued that, if Iowans were willing to go out on New Year's Eve to hear Obama speak, they would show up on Thursday to caucus for him.
Both Obama and Clinton ran hugely expensive campaigns in Iowa; in fact, Obama outspent Clinton by $2 million (€1.36 million) on television advertising alone. Both had dozens of offices in the state, numerous paid staff and hundreds of volunteers; and both employed experienced operatives who understood how Iowa's caucuses work.
But while Clinton ran a top-down operation, strictly controlled by her campaign headquarters outside Washington, Obama drew on his experience as a community organiser in Chicago to encourage his field workers to build organic support groups throughout the state.
As the results came in on Thursday night, it became clear that Obama had won in every single voter group - including women, on whom Clinton had depended so heavily. He was the overwhelming choice of young voters and won 41 per cent of the independents who caucused for the Democrats, compared to 23 per cent for Edwards and 17 per cent for Clinton.
"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come," Obama said in his victory speech.
IF OBAMA'S WIN in Iowa was sensational, Mike Huckabee's defeat of Republican rival Mitt Romney was little short of miraculous.
Romney, a multimillionaire businessman and former Massachusetts governor, started campaigning in Iowa a year ago and started running radio and television ads last March. With 17 full-time staff members supervising hundreds of volunteers in all 99 counties, Romney ran his campaign like a business plan, investing heavily to build a gold-plated ground game.
Until a couple of months ago, his plan to win Iowa and New Hampshire in the hope of building momentum for later primaries looked almost certain to succeed - particularly as leading rivals such as Rudy Giuliani and John McCain largely ignored Iowa. Then suddenly, last November, voters started to notice Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and an ordained Baptist minister - and in Iowa, they liked what they saw.
Where Romney is upright, uptight and picture-perfect, Huckabee is shabby, unpredictable and often very funny. As governor, he lost 45kg (100lbs) and wrote a diet and fitness book. He plays bass in a rock band and is such a big Rolling Stones fan that he pardoned Keith Richards for a driving offence.
An uncompromising social conservative who once suggested that people with Aids should be isolated from the general public, Huckabee is moderate on many other issues, including immigration and the criminal justice system. When he criticises Wall Street and talks about the struggle of middle-income Americans to pay for health care and college education, he can sound like a Democratic populist.
With a fraction of the resources available to Romney, Huckabee charmed his way into the hearts of Iowa Republicans, up to half of whom are evangelical Christians. Alarmed by Huckabee's rise, Romney flooded the airwaves with attack ads, portraying the former Arkansas governor as a tax-hiker who was soft on illegal immigration and too quick to pardon criminals.
The ads appeared to have an effect as Huckabee lost his lead in some polls and became so rattled that he went back to Arkansas last Sunday to record his own ad attacking Romney's record.
At a press conference on Monday to launch the ad, however, Huckabee announced that he had decided an hour earlier not to broadcast it because he didn't want to win by going negative. When he then started to show the ad he had rejected, the journalists fell about laughing and the media consensus agreed that Huckabee had made himself such a figure of fun that he couldn't possibly win on Thursday.
Talking to Republican voters in Iowa, however, it became clear that few shared the media's preoccupation with Huckabee's aborted attack ad and fewer still seemed to care about the candidate's shaky grasp of foreign affairs.
While Romney's operatives were hitting the phone banks, making 22,000 calls on Tuesday alone, Huckabee's supporters in church groups and the home-schooling movement were talking to neighbours, persuading them to caucus on Thursday.
Of those who caucused with the Republicans, 60 per cent were evangelical Christians, and Huckabee trounced Romney by 34 points to 25. Most pundits believe that Huckabee owes his success to his Christian credentials and to conservatives' doubts about the other candidates, but appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this week, Huckabee offered a simpler explanation.
"In looking for a presidential candidate, people want someone who looks more like the guy they work with than the guy who laid them off," he said.