Iowa is Over...

Well, almost.

At the moment about 94% of the precincts are reporting and Barack Obama is the clear Democratic winner with 37% of the vote. The Loser? Hillary looks set to come in third, about half a percentage point behind Edwards. In a state that borders Illinois, it's not surprising that Illinois Senator Obama had a small home field advantage. That doesn't account for a seven point victory. Obama clearly benefited from mobilizing new caucus goers. So the question becomes one of how much momentum her gains from this and whether he can keep bringing new participants to the caucus and primary process.

The last I looked, Hillary had a small lead in New Hampshire. And I believe NH is a winner-take-all state, unlike Iowa...

Iowa's Democratic Party uses the caucus process to pick delegates that go on to another caucus to vote on who to send to the nominating conventions. At the moment, CNN reckons that Obama will get 16 delegates sent on to the next level. Hillary will get 15 and Edwards 14, even though Edwards finished ahead of Hillary. Thus are the eccentricities of the system. there are 12 "super-delegates" that are uncommitted; so it's still anybody's guess ow tonight will effect the actual nominating process.

The GOP results seem to only be available through CNN. Even the GOP's Iowa Website doesn't seem to know how the vote is going. (The Iowa Democrats have had a very nice site updating numbers every 30 seconds since shortly after the caucuses started.)

Fred Thompson said that he needed to finish second in this race; he looks set to finish third, with McCain in fourth. But there's still about 15% of the GOP vote out and I'll probably go to bed before the count is complete.

And while the Dems seem to split their delegates, the GOP is closer to a winner-take-all format; Huckabbe, according to CNN, will get 37 of the 40 delegates from Iowa to the GOP nominating convention.

Giuliani is in last place; but considering he didn't really run in Iowa, that's no surprise. Ron Paul, in fifth, is probably the GOP's biggest loser; perhaps the hype about Paul will go away now...