Obama: the second-choice candidate

The democratic candidates may find a moment of respite today from the relentless Iowa campaigning to celebrate Thanksgiving, but with the race as close as it is, no one's going to be counting their turkeys before they hatch. The campaigning in Iowa is, as of late, being framed as a race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, since the Washington Post's last poll shows Obama overtaking Clinton's lead, but only within the margin of error. But given that this is Iowa, Obama may have a lot more to be thankful for than one might think at first glance. Namely, he can be very thankful not only his supporters, but also those in Iowa who support Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich.

In Iowa, it doesn't necessarily matter which candidate caucusgoers see as the best choice; rather, it matters which candidate has the most support as the caucusgoers' first OR second choice. As Time pointed out yesterday, "Obama could benefit from last-minute shifts in support...under the arcane rules of Iowa caucuses." On Jan. 3, democratic Iowan caucusgoers will gather together in their precincts, huddling in the corner designated for their respective first-choice candidates. After 30 minutes of trying to convince others to join their corner, there will be a count. If a candidate's corner is not occupied by at least 15 percent (in some precincts, 25 percent!) of the attendees, that candidate is not eligible to receive any delegates from that precinct. At that point, people are free to move corners again, and those who originally supported a candidate who ended up with less than 15 percent of the room will disperse to support someone else.

In other words, if the polls could truly represent a cross section of each precinct in Iowa, basically everyone in Iowa who now supports Richardson, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich or Gravel (is anyone supporting Gravel?), will have to choose someone else. Of course, the precincts could each have very different preferences; maybe all of Richardson's support in Iowa is concentrated in one county. In that case, caucusgoers' second choices may not matter as much. But if the three top candidates in Iowa truly are the top three in most precincts, Obama is doing very well. Twenty-six percent of those polled by the Washington Post said Obama is their second choice; Edwards came in at 24 percent, and Clinton only received 19 percent of the second choice votes. The Post shows Obama as the clear winner of combined first and second choice votes, at 55 percent, with Edwards in at a distant second with 45 percent and Clinton at 44.

This second-choice support could be critical for Obama. "If [Clinton] wins Iowa, I think the race is over," the La Times quotes Democratic pollster Mark Mellman as saying. "There's really no place else to stop her." On the flip side, a win for Obama in Iowa could propel him to take the lead he's been inching closer to in New Hampshire, and then to take the bigger states on Feb. 5. Obama might want to say thanks for the tight primary schedule as well.