NH v Iowa

| Posted by Emily on 8 January 2008 - 10:52pm
The TV coverage I've been watching has implied that New Hampshire is a crazy comeback surprise and Iowa is somehow the "real" result. I think they're wrong. Iowa is the anomaly, because of the bizarre public forum that is the Iowa caucus. You know why Hillary does worse in a caucus? Because women who are leaning Hillary go to the caucus with their husbands, and he says "Let's go for Obama" or "Let's go for Edwards" and she says "Well, all right then" because she doesn't want to spend the next hour sitting alone in the Hillary group. I've sat through a caucus. This is how it works.

It's a similar phenomenon with Obama--it is a lot more difficult to cast a vote against a black candidate in front of your peers than it is when you're alone in a voting booth.