Captain's Quarters -

Live Coverage Of The Iowa Caucuses

10:28 pm - I forgot to pick the winner of the comments-section portion of the caption contest! I'll let Disqus voters choose -- and they chose JG, with "What's in YOUR wallet?" 9:03 - Looking at the Republicans, it looks like Thompson and McCain will slug it out for third place. If Thompson prevails, he can hope to live through to South Carolina. McCain will have his relatively strong showing that he can use in New Hampshire. And as for Ron Paul, he can take heart with a 10% showing, but his supporters should stop talking about revolutions and media conspiracies to underrepresent his support. 8:54 - I would be remiss if I didn't point out the aspect of the Iowa results that Bill Bennett noted on CNN. Barack Obama won in Iowa despite its rather monochromatic demographics, and he did while leaving race out of the mix. And if he can do this well in Iowa ... Hillary has a lot of reason to be worried. 8:46 - On with Jack Riccardi now. 8:43 - With 65% of the GOP precincts reporting, Huckabee has a nine-point lead over Romney. Fred is still hanging onto third place, and he'll live to fight another day. 8:28 - CNN calls it for Obama, with 73% of the precincts reporting. Hillary has an embarrassing third-place finish, at least so far. If that sticks, she has a big big problem with the rest of the race. New Hampshire is a dead heat, and if Obama wins that, the rest of the nation will begin reconsidering their support for the Clintons. 8:19 - With 68% of Democratic precincts reporting, Obama now leads Edwards and Clinton 35%-31%-31%. Interesting ...Obama could really deal a death blow to Edwards here. 8:!3 - New update for the Republicans, and Giuliani just got a large bump upwards with 40% of precincts reporting. He's at 11% now, way ahead of where anyone would have guessed him finishing. 8:10 - Now up to 50% of the Dem precincts reporting, and Obama now leads 34% over Edwards at 32% and Clinton at 31%. 8:01 - I'm going on the Rick Moran show now, although we're having some technical difficulties. 7:58 - Obama has just edged into the lead for the Democrats, with 31% of the precincts reporting. 7:56 - CNN is calling it for Huckabee. 7:47 - Okay, it's getting a little more interesting. With 15% of the GOP precincts reporting, Huckabee leads Romney 36%-23%. Thompson's remaining in third with 15%, McCain has 12%, and Ron Paul 11%. The Dems have a three-way split still with 22% of the precincts reporting, with Edwards a point ahead of Clinton and Obama, 33-32-32. 7:42 - I notice that Ron Paul has 11% in the first few results (still 2% of precincts reporting). Not exactly the Revolution, but a pretty good showing if it holds. 7:37 - With 10% of the Dems in, Edwards leads with 34%, Hillary 2nd with 32%, and Obama with 31%. If that holds up -- and it won't -- it'll suit Hillary just fine. Edwards won't have a prayer anywhere else. 7:36 - Jack Cafferty is such a gasbag. "This election may represent the last, best chance to change the government." Hyperbole much? 7:32 - Very preliminary result from 2% of the precincts: Huckabee 33%, Romney 24%, Thompson 17%, McCain 11%. A Fred surprise? Maybe ... 7:24 - And in precinct 53, Obama has almost 100 more voters than Hillary. She's running in third place. And Joe Biden is already not viable, and Richardson's group is about to lose on viability as well. 7:23 - Camera shot of the night: Two Democrats talking about how experience really doesn't matter, while a kid wearing a (Reggie) Bush jersey stands just behind them. 7:20 - C-SPAN got even more dull, so I switched over to CNN to see the "entrance polling" done by the network. They're seeing a big turnout for evangelicals, older voters, and immigration voters among Republicans. The evangelical turnout will help Huckabee, and we had heard that the campaign was working on busing caucusers to the precincts. 7:11 - Precinct 53 (Democrat) has 375 attendees. The Republicans are still doing the admission thing in Carroll. 53 is about to start separating into candidate groups. Richardson gets the "Got Milk?" poster. Hope he's not lactose-intolerant. 7:03 - The Republican caucus apparently is off to a late start. C-SPAN is handling a caller who referred to Iowans as a "bunch of pork jockeys", who thinks that people in his community of La Grange, IL are much more sophisticated. Er .... sure. 6:53 - The winner of the Caption Contest's PhotoCrank set is MrGman4y, who added the caption, "There will be no questions, and you knew that!" It's the highest rated caption from Photocrank users. I'll pick one from the comments as well, a little later. 6:51 - A Giuliani surge? C-SPAN found two caucusers for Giuliani now, and one for McCain. So far, no one's admitting to caucusing for Huckabee or Romney. Hmmmm..... 6:40 - Don't forget that Jazz Shaw is live-blogging at Heading Right, and I'll be dropping a few comments there as well... 6:35 - Oh, joy; after the counts are done, the precincts will begin issuing policy statements. 6:34 - The Democrats have 19 pages of instructions in their caucusing manual. This should be lots of fun to watch. It's got to be more entertaining than watching Jim Sutton try to explain it. 6:26 PM CT: I'm going to go reverse-chronological order on this live-blog; it's easier to keep track of the newest posts, I think. I turned off CNN and turned on C-SPAN for the coverage, and I wound up listening to the Ronulans spamming C-SPAN's phone lines. They finally decided to interview the most boring couple in Iowa in Carroll, IA. Not an auspicious start. (They're Giuliani caucusers.) I'll be live-blogging events on this post this evening. Who will win? Who will lose? Who gets to claim momentum? All of these questions get answered this evening. I'll be appearing on two radio shows tonight as well. I'll join Rick Moran at 8 pm CT at his BlogTalkRadio show, and at 8:35 will join Jack Riccardi at 8:35 pm CT at San Antonio's KTSA. Be sure to catch both! Here are my predictions from earlier this morning: Republicans: Huckabee 32%, Romney 27%, McCain 15%, Thompson 12%, Paul 8%. Democrats: Obama 34%, Edwards 28%, Hillary 25% Keep watching for more live coverage, here and at Heading Right!