GOPers in Iowa: Huckabee's (Possibly) Hollow Victory

Mike Huckabee scored a pretty decisive victory in the Iowa Republican straw poll/caucus--a 9 point victory over Mitt Romney. But it was a one-dimensional victory: about 60% of the voters identified themselves in entrance polls as Evangelical Christians, and most went to Huckabee. Of those who identified themselves as not EC's, less than a fifth voted for him. There just aren't that many ECs in New Hampshire. He'll get a bounce out of Iowa and some fresh funding, but it won't be enough.

There's more bad news for him. Though he soundly defeated Mitt Romney, John McCain is neck and neck for third place with Fred Thompson (with 95% of the votes counted.) That's good enough to both give McCain some bounce in New Hampshire, where he's moving up anyway against Romney to be the favorite, and it's also enough to keep Fred Thompson in the race, preserving an alternative as conservative as Huckabee.

Huckabee's victory is causing consternation among Republicans already. He doesn't have the Bush pedigree to bring the Evangelicals and the Wall Street and Washington neocons all together. The latter two hated the Clintons for being upstart poor whites, and here's Huckabee who's governor of the same state and was born in literally the same little town as the Big Dog. In that sense and others, Huckabee is divider.

If Fred Thompson can finish third in New Hampshire (he has better pro help and probably looks a lot better to the heirs of Bush right now) and Huckabee is fourth, then it could all become complete chaos for the GOPers, right on to their convention.

All that said, Huckabee is also a wildcard. The polls that said he'd peaked in Iowa and his bubble had burst were dead wrong: a lot of his voters came to him in the past few days. He's probably going to have the resources to keep going well past New Hampshire and he has the possibility of raining on everybody's parade--including Rudy's last stand down in Florida--while not being strong enough to actually win the nomination.

On the numbers: the Des Moines Register poll was just about on the money on both races, and on a huge turnout (although even they underestimated that.) If I'd read their polling info more carefully on the proportion of evangelicals expected to vote, I might not have stuck with Romney in my prediction. I haven't seen any numbers on this yet, but I'd guess that most of the GOPer first timers were evangelicals voting for Huckabee.