Iowa Caucus: Results and What's Next

Winners of the Iowa caucus are Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. These results are somewhat surprising on both sides as it appeared before the caucuses began that Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney would be the top candidates. However, Hillary pulled off a strong third and Romney pulled off a strong second. Going into New Hampshire and some of the later primaries, it will be interesting to see if this early boost helped make primary winners into candidates.

New Hampshire is the next primary contest and thus far, Clinton and Romney were leading polling in the region, but it is yet to see if this will remain so. Though there are many viable candidates, none more so than Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, it still could be a possibility for many thought to be long shot contenders like John Edwards and/or Libertarian candidate John Paul.

You can see in previous articles, like J. Landon's vice presidential candidates article about possibilities of these people becoming vice presidents. While it is still up in the air who will get the nomination, often people who come in second in most polls end up being a strong choice for the vice presidential nomination. However, it seems unlikely that Hillary Clinton or John Edwards could be a strong second-in-command candidate under Obama because he is too new and them too experienced and well-known to accept the VP nomination at this point in time. So Democrat side, look to Governors of western states, possibly still Gravel of Alaska as possible contenders. For the Republican ticket, both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are relatively well-known and liked and there are not as much inner-party ill will, so it seems likely that one will be the other's vice president.