US Senator Marco Rubio, emerging from the first presidential nominating contest in Iowa as the leading Republican mainstream contender, portrayed himself in New Hampshire on Tuesday as the party’s best hope to recapture the White House.
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Unlike the republican caucus, the democratic victor in Iowa often wins the nomination but in a in a nail biter, Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by less than half a percentage point. Regardless of Monday night’s symbolic victory, Sanders has to compete with the head start Hillary got when a large portion of Democratic super-delegates pledged their support to her. A survey published by the AP in November showed that 359 of the 712 party elites planned on backing the former Secretary of State.
Twenty minutes after the caucuses began in Iowa, Rep. Steve King, the Cruz campaign’s national co-chair, retweeted CNN’s Chris Moody about Carson’s break from the campaign trail before New Hampshire’s primary.
“And I think they will in this case”, he said.
Now what? For Republicans, three candidates – Cruz, Trump and Rubio – won legitimate tickets to move on to New Hampshire.
“Really, the story coming out of Iowa is Bernie Sanders, I think”, said Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.).
Iowa’s track record of picking winners has been mixed in the past, but according to Pundits, it nearly always shapes the race.
Donald Trump admitted that his choice to skip the Fox News-hosted GOP debate could have contributed to his second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses Monday night.
“He’s a good guy, but he came in third and you made it sound like he had a victory but I didn’t – and I came in second!” That voting bloc was just 21 percent of the New Hampshire electorate in the 2012 Republican primary.
The result showed that people “are prepared to stand up for fundamental changes in the way politics and economics are done in America”, Sanders continued, to cheers from the crowd.
Donald Trump’s gracious acceptance of his second-place finish in Iowa was short-lived.
Sanders, 74, also won decisively among younger voters, while Clinton won almost as decisively among older voters. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in Iowa despite a series polls showing him pulling ahead of the senator.
Last night in Iowa, Ted Cruz’s campaign circulated a rumor about Ben Carson quitting his campaign.
“Some people thought the debate, you know, not doing the debate might have been a positive for perhaps my opponents”, Trump said.
“Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated”.
“This isn’t a student council election”, Christie told reporters on Wednesday in Bedford, suggesting Rubio’s campaign was too scripted.
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“It was Marco in the foxhole with Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer shooting at us, ” Cruz said, referring to the two top Democrats in the Senate.
