Curious : has anyone compiled Kucinich's *first round* numbers in IA?

[Mike Niendorff]

Statewide numbers, that is, across all the various caucuses (and is it even possible to get these?).

The reason I'm asking is this:

In the Dubuque (sp?) caucus that C-SPAN showed last night, the initial tally for Kucinich appeared to actually put him even with (or slightly ahead of) Dick Gephardt's initial tally. By my recollection, the initial head-count was : 23 for Kucinich vs. 22 for Gephardt. That surprised the hell out of me, but it seemed to pass unnoticed in the media coverage of the event.

Anyway, it got me thinking.

I don't know if there's any way to find out what Kucinich's first-round numbers were statewide, but I do know that, at least for that particular caucus, that puts his initial number at just shy of 11%. If that's at all representative (and I'm not saying it is), then that puts us in an interesting situation. It obviously isn't enough to put him over the 15% minimum for advancing to the second round, which means that this support would have then shifted over to Edwards (assuming that most Kucinich supporters honored the two candidates' deal, which is also certainly open to question).

This means that Kucinich's baseline support, while not translating into actual delegates, would still be significantly more than the 1%-3% that the media is consistently reporting for Kucinich. It also is about 3-4 times the support that was being reported in "likely voter" polls prior to the caucuses -- the ones that, notably, tend to underreport the impact of new voters. And it is certainly enough to have an impact on the overall race (11%, if representative, is a hell of a lot of votes).

So I guess what I'm wondering is this: did many of those "new voters" (the ones Dean was counting on) actually end up crossing over to Kucinich, and then, due ot the Kucinich-Edwards deal, get bumped over into the Edwards camp after the first round, accounting for at least a good portion of Edwards' last-minute "surge"?

Or is this just way too far of a stretch? ;)

Ok, for the record: I am neither a Democrat nor a Kucinich supporter, and I obviously am not an expert on the Iowa caucus system, and I fully admit that this may be an utterly stupid conjecture. I just can't help but wonder, though, if the Iowa results are telegraphing a move among newcomers from Dean to Kucinich that may show up in the next round of primaries.

Anyone have any thoughts? Am I on to something here, or am I just trying to make something out of a whole lot of nothing?


MDN

[goodhue]

1. good question and good point

But I don't think the pre-viability counts are recorded.
But you are right to realize that DK had quite a lot of support, certainly more than the 3% he had been polling and more likely well over 6% statewide. Edwards certainly benefited. See
http://desmoinesregister.com/news/stories/c4789004/23304009.html

But DK also benefited from Edwards supporters, see
http://news.mpr.org/features/2004/01/20_galballye_iowacaucus/

If you want to check out county by county delegates, see . . .
http://desmoinesregister.com/extras/politics/caucus2004/countyresults.html

[redqueen]

2. IIRC, caucus goers were calling the campaign HQ

to get advice after the first round.

Perhaps they kept a tally?

This is interesting, indeed.

[Mike Niendorff]

3. re: "Perhaps they kept a tally?"

I was wondering the same thing. Frankly, I'd be very surprised if the Kucinich campaign doesn't have at least a pretty good idea of what those first-round numbers were (given that they had people on the ground at most (all?) of the caucuses, and the head-counts were visible to anyone who was there).


MDN

[cryofan]

4. Huh? The exit polls showed that 4% of the caucusers supported him

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3762614
Also, you can see that Dk got his support from ultraliberal independents (hey, I resemble that remark!)