Common Sense University

Finally, the circus show called “Iowa caucus 2008” is a thing of the past, and what a show it was. There has never been such hype about a single small state’s presidential primary vote. About 335,000 people left their homes and voted in Iowa, supposedly a record high for this state where more than two million residents are eligible voters. That makes it a 17 percent turnout, dismal for any election in America. Nevertheless, the build-up to Election Day was immense due to its timing. There was hardly a moment’s rest for the candidates even during the holidays and the entire media industry went happily along with it.

We posted an article about the Iowa caucuses in the past and took a closer look at their – what we consider – antiquated voting procedures and even the media took the time to describe them. The only point of interest is the fact that these procedures were not questioned at all while at the same time the importance of this election, if one can call it that, was constantly hyped. “This election could make or break candidates” we were told. Laughable as this is, it turned out to be true for those who did not get one percent of the vote. Democrat Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd suffered just such a ‘fate’. Wow, what a prediction by the media. Common sense should have told them that a very long time ago. There are a few more candidates on both sides that will sooner rather than later realize their unrealistic expectations and deflated political egos and drop out as well (see our article posted on November 14 called ‘Presidential Race Update’).

We also posted an article about the uselessness of polls in the past (August 30) and we feel vindicated since all polls up until Iowa caucus day predicted close races on both the Democrat and Republican sides – too close to call – was the most used buzzword here. Some polls had some candidates ‘surging’ while other polls simply could not predict the outcome. Add to this the punditry, the highly respected media members who wrote hundreds of articles and reported and opined daily (and some even hourly) on television shows and on talk radio. Not one individual even came close to predicting the real outcome of the Iowa caucuses.

Let us take a closer look:

On the Democratic side, it was assumed to be a three-way race, apparently too close to call and where the outcome would depend on the individual candidate’s campaign machinery and organization. In reality, Barack Obama (U.S. Senator from Illinois) at 38 percent won by an impressive eight percent margin over second place finisher John Edwards (former Senator from North Carolina) who received 30 percent of the vote and by nine percent over Hillary Clinton (Senator from New York) who garnered 29 percent. This was not a race! The margin of victory for Mr. Obama was impressive.

On the Republican side, it was supposed to be a two-way race and ‘too close to call’. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas received 34 percent of the votes and beat second place finisher Mitt Romney (former governor of Massachusetts) by an impressive nine percent margin. Romney had to settle for 25 percent of the votes cast.

What happened here, how could things go from ‘too close to call’ to landslide margins within a few hours? The answer is very simple in that it is common sense: Polls are NOT reliable and the self pronounced political experts do not really know what is going on but give us their personal and in many instances, unreliable opinions. Instead of analyzing the candidate’s programs and proposals in more detail and then presenting the results of their fact finding to us common folks, they take the easy job of just giving us their opinions and beliefs. From the very start, we here at ‘Consider Common Sense’ have emphasized the importance for everybody to think for oneself and not just accept at face value what others are telling us. We like to recommend this to all you website visitors once again by just using the small example of the Iowa caucus event. And the reliability of polls should also be severely questioned. This will be especially important when Super-Tuesday (February 5, 2008) comes around and when millions and millions of voters in 22 other states will go to the polls to cast their votes.

To us, the Iowa election results have shown several realities. In a state where the black population amounts to no more than two percent, Barack Obama, a first time Senator from Illinois has won an overwhelming victory over an opponent considered to be unbeatable, namely, Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and current Senator from New York. His message, while short on specifics, was nonetheless inspiring and convincing and he deserved the victory. It also indicates that Americans do no longer vote against candidates based on their race and skin color. This is truly remarkable in the face of the continuing attempts to divide us by race and skin color, we here believe that we have overcome those prejudices and that is very good and positive for America.

On the Republican side, the results reflect reality in that a very large number of evangelical voters decided to vote their religion by supporting Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister. And yet, 25 percent of the votes were cast for Mitt Romney, a member of the Mormon Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints). Also a positive sign considering the fact that Iowa has a huge population of evangelical Christians and a very small group of Mormons. It will be interesting to see if this pattern will continue into the next 49 primary states, we believe this not to be the case yet we will keep you posted and continue to bring you our analyses.

This article and others on Common Sense Author are designed to provoke further thought and investigation.   It is not the intent for the articles to be politically biased. Sources are referenced in each article to encourage readers to delve into the supporting material.  We welcome all readers to participate with their point of view either in support or contrary with additional information sources.

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