Of the 850,000 or so registered voters, nearly 44% are Independents, 30% registered Republicans and even smaller percentage (26%) are registered Democrats. And since these Indepenedent voters can vote for either a Republican or a Democratic candidate, they are indispensable for candidates from both parties.

The current surge in polls, both for Obama ( ~39% to Clinton’s ~29%) and McCain (~32% to Romney’s ~30%) -who won the primary vote in 2000 against Bush- can be attributed to a limited extent on their increased appeal in their respective parties and could help them to win tomorrow. However, the main reason for these extraordinary poll numbers, especially for Obama are mainly due to Independent voters. Ironically, the more independent voters go to Obama, the less likely it is for McCain to win tomorrow’s vote, which in turn could mean a win for Romney.

Below is a heatmap of spatial distribution of Independent voters across the Granite State from 2004. For an interactive version of the map where you could use pan and zoom functions to navigate the map and explore details of distribution of Democrats and Republican voters, go to Geocommons .

New Hampshire Independent Voters, originally uploaded by rajkulkarni63.

The original data for Year 2004 was compiled by Belgen on Many Eyes website which was then geocoded and rasterized using GeoCommons tools to generate the current heatmap.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Of the record number of votes (nearly 350, 600) cast in yesterday’s caucuses, Republicans share was a little over 28%, i.e., more than 116,000. That is still just 20% of the all those who are registered as Republicans. And they have managed to change the direction of the GOP nomination by voting in record numbers for Huckabee (~39,800). Romney with a little over 29,000 votes came in 2nd and Thompson’s was 3rd finish with 15,500. However these numbers pale in comparison to those for Obama (~93,000), Edwards (~74,400) and Clintons (~73,600).

The top five counties with the most votes for Huckabee are:

County Vote
Polk ~8,040
Linn ~1,880
Story ~1,850
Dallas ~1,250
Scott ~1,240

Huckabee share of Iowa Caucus votes, originally uploaded by rajkulkarni63.

Note: Bright red hues = Higher share, Dark red hues = Lower share

Popularity: 6% [?]

Of the record number of votes (nearly 350, 600) cast in yesterday’s caucuses, Republicans share was a little over 28%, i.e., more than 116,000. That is still just 20% of the all those who are registered as Republicans. And they have managed to change the direction of the GOP nomination by voting in record numbers for Huckabee (~39,800). And yet they have managed to change the direction of the GOP nomination by voting in record numbers for Huckabee (39,800). Romney with a little over 29,000 votes came in 2nd and Thompson’s was 3rd finish with 11,600.
The top five counties where Romney had votes are:

County Vote
Polk ~5,260
Linn ~2,290
Scott ~1,700
Woodbury ~1,300
Dallas ~1,260

Romney’s share of Iowa Caucus votes, originally uploaded by rajkulkarni63.

Note: Bright green hues= Higher share, Dark green hues = Lower share

Popularity: 8% [?]

Of the record number of votes (nearly 350, 600) cast in yesterday’s caucuses, Republicans share was a little over 28%, i.e., more than 116,000. That is still just 20% of the all those who are registered as Republicans. And they have managed to change the direction of the GOP nomination by voting in record numbers for Huckabee (~39,800). And yet they have managed to change the direction of the GOP nomination by voting in record numbers for Huckabee (39,800), who came in first while Thompson with
with little over 15,500 votes (15%) came in third while Romney finished second with nearly 24% votes.

The top five counties who gave the most votes to Thompson are:
County Votes
Polk ~2850
Linn ~1,080
Scott ~690
Woodbury ~560
Story ~490

Thompson share of Iowa Caucus votes, originally uploaded by rajkulkarni63.

Note: Bright blue hues = Higher share, Dark blue hues = Lower share

Popularity: 5% [?]

Of the record number of votes (nearly 350,600) cast in yesterday’s caucuses, Democrats share was a little over 71%, i.e., more than 250,000. That is nearly 38% of the total registered Democrats. Iowa also have very large number of Independents and many of who may have voted for one of the Democratic candidates. Clinton with little over 73,600 (29%) votes came in 3rd to Edwards who finished second with nearly 74,400 (30%)and Obama with more than 93,900 (38%).
The top five counties where Clinton got the most votes are:

County Votes
Polk ~9,900
Linn ~5,680
Scott ~4,180
Black Hawk ~3,250
Johnson ~2,800

Clinton share of Iowa caucus vote by county, originally uploaded by rajkulkarni63.

Note: Bright blue hues = higher share, Dark blue hues = lower share

Popularity: 5% [?]