With the Iowa caucus past, the focus is on now on next Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.
Senator Ted Cruz won the GOP caucus, with businessman Donald Trump finishing second. Former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton narrowly edged Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic caucus.
Randy Adkins, professor of political science at UNO, says there were a couple of surprises on Monday. One was Senator Marco Rubio’s strong third-place finish in the Republican caucus. Adkins says the other was the razor-thin margin between Clinton and Sanders.
"I think that what we saw was that Martin O’Malley’s supporters ended up being the deciding factor in deciding that it was going to be so close. In Iowa, you have to get at least 15 percent within a precinct caucus in order to move to the second round. And when a candidate doesn’t get 15 percent, his or her supporters then get to go to their second choice. And so in the end, I think it was the O’Malley supporters that decided that they wanted this thing to be so close."
Adkins expect the race between Clinton and Sanders to be hotly contested for several months, possibly all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July.
On the Republican side, Adkins expects more candidates will leave the race after the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.