Iowa

It's looking good for Edwards.

When he planned his 2008 campaign he figured half the folks wouldn't vote for Hillary, but he didn't figure on Obama. So it's been a struggle. I continue to think that he's on the right track; anti-corporate and anti-war, and his policy papers have been the best on health care and trade policies.

His political strategy has been sound, too; paying a lot of attention to the less populous districts in the western part of the state. From a recent Newsweek article.

"For months, Edwards has been rounding up support in the state’s rural precincts where the front runners have paid less attention. While Obama and Clinton have drawn crowds in the thousands in places like Des Moines and Ames, Edwards has been winning over people in tiny towns like Sac City (population: 2,189). That’s important, the strategists say, because under Iowa’s arcane caucus rules, a precinct where 25 people show up to vote gets the same number of delegates as a place that packs in 2,500. In other words, even if he loses to Obama and Clinton in the state’s bigger cities, he can still win by wrapping up smaller, far-flung precincts that other candidates have ignored. “The bulk of our support is in small and medium counties,” says Jennifer O’Malley, Edwards’s Iowa state director. O’Malley says Edwards has visited all 99 counties in the state; the campaign has so far trained captains covering 90 percent of all 1,781 precincts. Rural voters are sometimes reluctant to caucus, so the campaign has been enlisting respected community leaders to encourage first-timers to get past their apathy or fear."

Another part of his strategy is to be everybody's second choice. If you're an Iowa caucus goer, and your candidate doesn't have the support of 15% of the people who show up, you can switch to another candidate or go home. If Edwards gets 65% of the 15% who support second tier candidates (can't get over the 15% threshhold) those additions would add up to 10% of caucusers to his column. Nice guys don't always finish last.