Religious vote vaults Huckabee to win
Evangelical Christians and those who want a candidate to share their religious beliefs vaulted Mike Huckabee to victory and rejected Mitt Romney in Iowa's Republican caucuses Thursday night, a survey of early arrivals found.
In the Democratic contest, young voters turned out in big numbers and heavily favored Barack Obama, who also won many votes for his message of change. Older voters and people who gave high priority to a candidate's experience backed Hillary Rodham Clinton. John Edwards scored on empathy and electability.
Born-again or evangelical Christians comprised six in 10 Republican caucus-goers and nearly half of them favored Huckabee, according to preliminary results of entrance polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks. Only one in five favored Romney, who has been viewed skeptically by some religious voters.
Nearly four in 10 Republican caucus-goers said it matters a great deal to them that a candidate shares their religious beliefs. More than half of them favored Huckabee and barely one in 10 favored Romney.
In the Democratic contest, about one in five caucus-goers were under age 30 -- about twice as many as typically vote in early presidential nomination events -- and more than half of them expressed initial preference for Obama. More than half the Democratic voters were attending their first caucus and Obama led among that group, too.
About a quarter of Democratic caucus-goers were 65 or older -- twice their number in Iowa's general population -- and nearly half of them expressed initial preference for Clinton. She also won about half the vote from caucus-goers who, when given a choice from four personal qualities, said the most important was that a presidential candidate "has the right experience."
Edwards won nearly half the Democrats who said the top attribute was that a candidate "cares about people like me," and he narrowly led Clinton and far outdistanced Obama among those most concerned that the candidate has the best chance to win in November.
But half of Democrats said it was most important that a candidate "can bring about needed change" and half of them backed Obama.
The surveys were conducted for AP and the television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International as voters arrived at 40 sites each for Democratic and Republican caucuses in Iowa. The Democratic entrance poll interviewed 1,499 caucus-goers, the Republican survey 1,150. Each survey had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points. 