Some thoughts on the incomplete results as reported by Fox News.
Overall, it doesn’t look like turnout is going to be substantially above the 119,000 level in 2008. So my earlier extrapolation from the results in two Waukee precincts in Dallas County seems to have been unfounded. At 10pm the total number of votes tallied in 45% of the 1,774 caucus locations is 50,468, which suggests a total turnout around 112,000—less than the 119,000 who turned out in 2008.
Poor Michele Bachmann. She is arguably more in line with tea party orthodoxy than any of her rivals, and she was born and grew up in Iowa, but it looks like she’s finishing sixth out of six candidates actively competing in the state. Even in Black Hawk County (Waterloo), where she grew up, where the returns seem to be complete (they show more people voting than in 2008), she is in fifth place, exactly two votes ahead of Rick Perry, with 8% of the votes.
Rick Perry is leading in two counties at the moment, Taylor County by the Missouri border (which cast fewer votes than any other Iowa county in 2008) and Union County, although only one caucus site seems to have reported there.
Newt Gingrich is leading in Winneshiek County in northeast Iowa in what look like incomplete returns. The county seat is Decorah, home of Luther College, the alma mater of Callista Gingrich. But he’s only leading Mitt Romney by a 27%-25% margin there.
Rick Santorum’s 357 public events in all of Iowa’s 99 counties is reflected in the fact that he is carrying more counties in reported returns than any other candidates. However, contrary to suggestions from me and others, he’s not ahead in heavily (60%-plus) Catholic Dubuque County, where he’s behind Mitt Romney (who won 42% here in 2008, his best percentage in any Iowa county) and Ron Paul in current incomplete returns. Interestingly, Santorum doesn’t have big leads in many counties, but with some notable exceptions, including Grundy County, the home of Senator Charles Grassley, and Butler, Floyd and Howard Counties, farming counties just to the north, and Buchanan County to the east. Santorum also has big leads in Mahaska, Marion and Jasper Counties, the first two of which have heavily Dutch-American populations; Jasper, just east of Des Moines, was for years the home of the Maytag company. In even more heavily Dutch-American Sioux City in northwest Iowa, Santorum beat Romney by a huge 46%-15% margin, similar to the Santorum lead in much smaller Lyon County just to the north, where Santorum leads 61%-11% lead over Paul.
Mitt Romney has his biggest leads where he did in 2008: in eastern Iowa, where he’s carrying current returns in Dubuque County solidly and Scott County (Davenport) narrowly. He’s running best, it seems, in relatively upscale areas. In Dallas County just west of Des Moines, the fastest-growing county in the state, Romney is leading 34%-20%, and in Linn County (Cedar Rapids, including its upscale suburbs), where Romney leads Paul and Santorum 30%-24%-21%, where 8,383 votes have been counted and 7,824 were cast in 2008. Reporting late but importantly was Des Moines’s Polk County, where 21,600 votes are now reported as compared to a 22,493 total in 2008, Romney leads Paul and Santorum by a 29%-23%-22% margin. Also Romney is carrying Johnson County (Iowa City) leads Paul and Santorum 35%-31%-17%. Romney essentially carried the relatively large urban counties.
As for Ron Paul, Jefferson County, the home of Maharishi University and local meditationists, which was one of two counties Paul carried in the whole nation in 2008, has not yet reported; but there are a limited number of voters there (839 votes in 2008). Nor has more than one caucus site reported from Story County (Ames, Iowa State University, home town of the late Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley), where Paul will probably do well. But he didn’t score well enough in Des Moines or Cedar Rapids to do better than third place statewide.
