I don’t necessarily agree with this spin, but I thought it was worth sharing. Go to the bottom to get my take, if you’re interested.
I received the following e-mail from the Mitt Romney campaign today.
Mike Huckabee won the Iowa Caucuses. In the spirit of graciousness that Mitt Romney exuded last night, Huckabee is to be congratulated. Good job, you won fair and square.
However, in the spirit of an ardent Romney supporter and as someone who likes to look into the detailed demographics of voting/polls, I’d be worried if I were Mike Huckabee.
The New York Times is reporting that OVER 80% of Huckabee caucus supporters described themselves as Evangelical Christians.
Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, rode a crest of evangelical Christian support to victory on Thursday over his rival Mitt Romney, capping a remarkable ascent over the last two months from near the bottom of the Republican field. A poll of people entering the Republican caucuses on Thursday showed more than 8 in 10 of his supporters identified themselves as evangelicals.
The same surveys showed extraordinary turnout among evangelicals, who represented some 60 percent of Republican caucus goers. In years past, Republican Party leaders in Iowa put evangelical turnout at about 40 percent [actually, this story reports that the 2000 evangelical turnout was 39%].
Mr. Romney’s advisers had been saying that if evangelical turnout rose to more than 50 percent, victory would be impossible for Mr. Romney, whose Mormon faith is regarded as heretical by many evangelicals.
And lead paragraphs like this don’t help the image of Huckabee’s win here:
DES MOINES — Just as the Republican caucuses began on Thursday at 6:30 p.m., a small group of women and children joined hands in the middle of the ballroom at Mike Huckabee’s headquarters here and began to pray for his election.
Going back to the numbers . . . Rich Lowry put it pretty clearly:
Here’s one way to look at it: 60% of voters were evangelicals. Huck beat Romney among them 45-19%. 40% weren’t evangelicals. Romney beat Huck among them 33-13%.
Turnout for the GOP in the Iowa Caucuses was projected to be 80,000. It turns out that there were 114,000 voters . . . and it represents the highest turnout of Evangelicals ever (by a long shot) at nearly 70,000.
However, this other New York Times article shows that, while 25% of the US population consider themselves Evangelicals, only 12% of the US population are “traditionalist” Evangelicals. The rest are “centrists” or “modernists” and their votes split between the parties. If Huckabee thinks that he can count on the “traditionalist” Evangelical vote to carry him to the nomination, he’s sorely misinformed. If he somehow manages to get the nomination, Evangelicals surely won’t be enough to carry him into the White House. The Dems are still licking their chops at the prospect of him being the nominee.
The good news heading into New Hampshire is that the Romney camp turned out MORE people than they thought they would–over 30,000 votes. But if not for the super showing by the evangelicals, Romney would have won this going away. His 30,000+ votes among the projected 80,000 voters would have been nearly 40% of the vote . . . a convincing victory similar to Bush’s Iowa win in 2000. Huckabee over-performed last night at nearly 40,000 votes. But LESS THAN 10,000 of those voters were NOT evangelicals (fewer votes than even Ron Paul got in the caucuses). Put another way, only 1 out of every 330 non-evangelical Iowans turned out to vote for Huckabee as their next commander in chief. Hardly a “mandate” for him.
The likely outcome of the Iowa GOP delegate count is very interesting too:
Huckabee – 34% (17 delegates)
Romney – 25% (12 delegates)
Thompson – 13% (3 delegates)
McCain – 13% (3 delegates)
Paul – 10% (2 delegates)
Giuliani – 4% (no delegates)New Hampshire is not “winner take all” for their GOP delegates either (all 12 of them). However NH shakes out, it’s still pretty clear that Romney will be the leader in total delegates after NH (counting the delegates he’ll probably pick up tomorrow in Wyoming). That may be a convincing argument to Romney passing the viability and electability test and being the one who can re-unite the conservative coalition.
Romney supporters need to realize what a strange aberration of evangelical outpouring the Iowa caucus was. Romney turned out his supporters. He’ll do the same in NH. He’s the best candidate we have bar none. As another Romney supporter said, it’s time to quickly lick our wounds and battle on.
COMMENTS from Geoff B: I think there’s some truth to the above, but as much as the Romney campaign wants to spin Iowa, it was still a loss, and a devastating one. Romney has been concentrating resources in Iowa for a year. He made very little headway with key voters there compared to the amount of time he spent there.
I don’t think we can ignore some of Romney’s negatives. For some reason that I personally don’t understand he comes across as not being genuine. I’m not talking about the “flip-flopping,” I’m talking about the claims that he is seems to have the appearance of a used car salesman (or perhaps more accurately a junk bond salesman). As I say, I don’t get this impression at all from him — he reminds me of all of the stake presidents I have ever known in the Church, and they all appeared very genuine to me. But I keep on seeing and hearing this comment all the time — that he does not appear genuine. I don’t think you can ignore those comments.
I think the claim that he is a “life-long hunter” was dumb. I’m sure he wishes he could take that one back. I’m a member of the NRA and favor the 2nd amendment, but I’ve never hunted anything except clay pigeons myself. There are so many other ways you can say you favor gun rights — and garner the support of this very important constituency — without looking like Mike Dukakis on a tank. As I’ve said several times, I don’t like the way he has made immigration such an issue.
But as I’ve said many times before on this blog, I agree with Romney on 90 percent of the issues, and I can’t say that for McCain, Giuliani or Huckabee, not to mention all of the Democrats. I continue to support him.
I’d like to say that the evangelical opposition to Romney’s candidacy makes me extremely sad. Yes, some of it is pro-Huckabee (rather than anti-Romney). But I don’t think we can deny that a large part of it is bitterly anti-Mormon. All reports from Iowa indicate there is a large network of evangelicals and home-schoolers who were specifically mobilized to vote against Romney because of his religion. We always knew a portion of the electorate would respond this way, but frankly I was surprised the numbers of anti-Mormons are as high as they were in Iowa. I hope that trend decreases elsewhere, but sadly I doubt it.
I’d like to make one last point: there has been much talk about the demise of the Reagan conservative coalition. Remember, that coalition was based on uniting foreign policy conservatives, economic conservatives and social conservatives. I firmly believe that this is the only way that a Republican can get elected in November, by being a conservative in all three areas. One of the lessons we have learned from the Bush years is that when a Republican turns wishy-washy in one of the three areas (Bush is an economic moderate, not a conservative, and has done little until recently to try to rein in spending), the coalition begins to fall apart. Nobody but Romney can claim to be a conservative in all three areas. Nobody but Romney will be electable for the Republicans in 2008.
Michael Medved argues in this article that there is no evidence of anti-Mormon bigotry in the Iowa vote. Worth reading.
http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/blog/g/75f7897d-1fb4-4a2f-9177-32b8ee72fe17
Somewhere or other someone said “Romney keeps telling us he’s a turn-around artist. He needs to prove it.” That’s more or less my take, too.
I do think the Huckabee position is very weak outside of Iowa-like states. At the end of the day the fact that MSNBC commentators know “definitely not conservative” friends who “love” Huckabee, and that the 700 Club is so very pleased, will do the man no favors when he gets to states like, well, New Hampshire. A few months ago in a fit of anti-Ron Paul pique I made a shirt at CafePress that says “I already have a Savior, what I need is a President” — I finally sold one (to a Nevada resident) about twelve hours after the Iowa results were called. ^_^
But my bottom line remains that this year, more than any year in which I’ve voted, there are a bunch of people I don’t want to see in the White House at all. I need either Romney or Thompson to get it together soon.
As far as anti-Mormon bigotry: the Columbus Dispatch polled voters in Chillicothe, which always goes for whichever candidate wins the general election, and found that while 45% would “never” vote for Hillary and 35% would “never” vote for Guiliani (and 26% never for a pro-life candidate and 21% never for a pro-choice candidate,) just 18% would “never” vote for “a Mormon for president.” Clearly it’s better to be Mormon than married to Bill Clinton in this election, which I’m going to take as an affirmation of my personal life choices. Based on my personal knowledge of that town (and semi-rural Ohio in general,) by the way, I would have estimated numbers closer to 50%. This is the land of churches whose children are encouraged to throw things at the missionaries (that was NOT in Chillicothe, but in a similar Ohio town, from a demographic point of view.)
That Medved column is terrible. His method is to show that Iowa evangelical voters weren’t that different from all Iowa voters taken as a group. But that’s to be expected, because most Iowa voters are evangelicals. He should be comparing evangelicals to non-evangelicals, but it would make his point weaker, so he doesn’t do it.
Still, he might be right that anti-Mormon bias played a small role.
I am feeling better about the big loss.
The huge increase in turnout of Evangelicals with no money and little organization on Huckabee’s part makes it look pretty clear that there was nothing much Romney could do. I don’t know if it can be categorized as anti-Mormon bigotry so much as Huckabee’s Christian Identity pitch worked.
The Church was silent this time about encouraging members to go to caucuses (not like they would have made a huge difference), while pastors were openly (if not officially) electioneering for Hucakbee and that kind of infrastructure surpassed anything Romney could have bought. And Huckabee had it for free.
So I was disappointed too that Huckabee’s “Golly, I’m Christian too!” campaign worked in Iowa. I have a hard time believing it will work elsewhere. But he’s been a getting a lot of good publicity and with perfect timing and his natural charm, that’s dangerous.
Incidentally, while Medved in the past has been a great and very informed defender of the Church he has really lost it with Romney. He’s a McCain backer (which is fine) but he has been so blind and intellectually dishonest when it comes to the Romney campaign. For him the Romney campaign can do no right and McCain and especially Huckabee can do no wrong. I used to really like him but he has lost all credibility as a campaign pundit.
David, I did not know that about Medved. He is one of my favorite pundits, but backing McCain and Huckabee? Hmmmm.
My gut tells me Huckabee will fade away after failing in NH and then Michigan. He may win SC and then he will be competitive in Florida, but California, NY, NJ, Pennsylvania? No way. He will pull out after Feb. 5 and end up endorsing McCain. Hopefully Romney will still be around then and the battle will be McCain-Romney the rest of the way. We’ll see.
As of this evening, the delegate totals are:
Romney – 26
Huckabee – 20
Thompson – 6
McCain – 3
Paul – 2
Guiliani – 1
Hunter – 1
As far as I can tell, it would take not only McCain gaining the overwhelming majority of the delegates in NH, but moreover Romney losing his current lead Michigan (and by “lose” I mean “drop to fourth place,”) for Romney to be in anything other than first place on January 16th (Romney also has the support of 6 “superdelegates.”) I think Huckabee is going to stay at the second/third place level, and either Thompson or McCain will “catch up,” based on the most recent polls in NH, MI, and SC.
Of course Romney is spinning Iowa in positive way–he’s a politician! 🙂
I doubt Huckabee is going to gain a lot of meaningful momentum out of Iowa. Not many evangelicals in NH.
If it weren’t for a tight Democratic race in NH, I would give McCain the edge in the NH primaries, but I think a lot of Ind. voters will vote in the Democratic primaries. Advantage goes to Romney, now, I think.
As Romney points out in one of his contrast ads, McCain is an honorable man, but far too liberal for much of the Republican party.
Well, it will probably come as no surprise that that is exactly how Romney comes across to me. His smooth appearance, not-infrequent smugness, and flip-flopping on almost every major issue (conveniently, just before his presidential bid) lead me to view him as a man who likes power and will say and do and be anything he thinks voters want to hear and see in order to obtain it. The phrase “empty suit” comes to mind.
But I don’t mean to pick on Mitt — Giuliani and Thompson come across exactly the same way.
Sarah, where are you getting those figures from?
While I don’t think Huckabee has a chance of getting the nomination (nor do I think Guiliani does) I do think he can play a spoiler for Romney. Although as I’ve said many times most of Romney’s troubles are of his own making and not because of his Mormonism.
I think Romney will eventually win, but I think McCain has a pretty fighting chance. Something I didn’t think possible as late as November.
The big question is whether Clinton can come back. I’m still betting on her and as much as I dislike her hope she wins rather than Obama. (I like Obama very much as a person, from what I’ve seen, but really worry about his policies)
Clark:
Since the time I posted that, all the Iowa results on Wikipedia changed, so Mike Huckabee is back in the lead over Romney, 33 to 21, with Thompson back down to 3 along with McCain. It appears that everyone is stuck guessing, because Iowa results aren’t actually binding on the state’s delegates. The source that I had for the Iowa totals was the same one that Wikipedia is currently devaluing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_%28United_States%29_presidential_primaries%2C_2008
From the discussion page: “I reset the delegate count because news reports have been very conflicting. Frankly, the Yahoo news source cited seems to be the incorrect source, but I can’t guarantee that. CNN is reporting something very different.”
I tend to think that Huckabee’s eventual collapse will dictate a change in Iowa’s totals, but there’s no good reason to think that Mitt will gain six and Thompson three, so I’ll stick with the 33/21/3/3/1/1 totals for now. The difference amounts to Romney edging Huckabee out because of Michigan’s winner-take-all status, and after Michigan should look something like 37/36/4/3/1/1 (though my Michigan polling data is OLD, and me guessing on delegate totals and trying to do the math in a year when the states are being penalized with delegate number reductions, is never a good idea, particularly at 3am.)
Incidentally, I always recommend reading the discussion pages on Wikipedia, if only because sometimes, e.g., someone from Colorado will pop up and say “Wyoming is the *other* square state.”
(BTW, thanks for pointing that out. I would have been blissfully ignorant till January 15th – I’m trying not to focus on the election between primary dates.)
Wow, that’s a fascinating post-Iowa spin. Romney is basically saying, “I tried to court the evangelical vote but failed, so now in NH, I’m trying to court the independent vote that does not want an evangelical.”
Remember, he’s been pronounced dead before (literally). Don’t count him out yet.