#1 and still underrated

What an exciting week! Congratulations to the Mike Huckabee campaign for their resounding victory in the Iowa caucus on Thursday night. Huckabee polled over 40,000 votes for 34.4%, well above 2nd-place Mitt Romney, who got fewer than 30,000 votes, or 25.2%. The table below shows how the candidates ranked in each county. Mike finished first or second in 98 of the 99 counties.

Rank	Huckabee	Romney	Thompson	McCain	Paul	Giuliani	Hunter	Tancredo
1	74	24	0	0	1	0	0	0
2	24	53	11	7	4	0	0	0
3	1	20	50	18	12	0	0	0
4	0	1	26	52	23	0	0	0
5	0	1	12	22	58	1	0	0
6	0	0	0	0	1	93	9	0
7	0	0	0	0	0	5	89	21
8	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	78
avg	1.3	2.0	3.4	3.9	4.4	6.0	6.9	7.8

And looking at the entrance poll numbers, we find that Huckabee finished first among…

• Women (40%) and Men (29)
  
• All Age groups
  
  • Ages 17-29 (40)
    
  • Ages 30-44 (39)
    
  • Ages 45-64 (31)
    
  • Ages 65+ (30)
    
• Those who decided in the last month or before
  
• Those who decided on caucus day
  
• Those who strongly favor their candidate
  
• No matter the choice for the most important problem facing the country
  
  • Illegal immigration
    
  • War in Iraq
    
  • The economy
    
  • Terrorism
    
• Republicans (as opposed to a small group of self-identified independents, who went for Paul)
  
• Self-described as "very conservative"
  
• Self-described as "conservative"
  
• All views of the Bush administration except for "angry" (from "enthusiastic" to "dissatisfied")
  
• Family incomes below $100,000 (Romney nudged ahead on the rich folks)
  
• Suburbanites, small towners, and country folk
  
• Central Iowa, East Iowa, and West Iowa (all 3 regions)
  

Much has already been made about the evangelical vote. Fully 60% of GOP caucus goers described themselves as evangelical or born-again, and they went heavily for Huckabee, as expected. Some pundits are pooh-poohing the Iowa victory on the idea that other states don't have as many born-agains. But Barna Research consistently finds that 35-45% of American adults can be classified as born-again. Based on self-descriptions, like the Iowa polls, Barna finds that 45% call themselves born-again. Splitting that into the two major parties, Barna estimates that 51% of Republicans are born-again. Evangelicals trend GOP by a 59-16 margin. So it's not a stretch by any means that other states would trend similarly to Iowa in their GOP primaries. For example, South Carolina is decidedly more evangelical than is Iowa.

I do agree with the observation that Huckabee must deepen his appeal to non-evangelicals, and i'm confident that he can do just that. His platform of seeking energy independence, of significant pro-growth tax reform, of meaningful immigration reform, of novel education ideas like promoting arts & music education, of a focus on preventative health care, of understanding the nature of our fight against Islamic extremists, of defense of 2^nd Amendment rights – all these are coalition-building issues that go well beyond religious affiliation. Even more, Huckabee's outstanding ability to communicate, to connect with average Americans transcends religion.