[Update: Debate transcript here.]

The Democratic debate is over. Live thread one is here. This thread is for post-debate comments.

What did you think? Who won? Who scored points and who lost them?

Big Tent Democrat says: [More....]

The ABC News debate is on tape delay for Denver, an hour behind the East Coast. But, it's streaming live on WMUR, New Hampshire. So, I'll live blog -- please join in the comments.

8:45 pm: The Democratic candidates came out to do a meet and greet with the Republicans. Rudy and Hillary chatted friend-like, he put his arm on her arm. She and Huckabee also had a warm little moment, he whispered something in her ear. Edwards and McCain were very warm to each other.

9:05: What is this? The debate starts with an ABC news clip? It's on nuclear prolifieration. After watching the clip, the question is how aggressively would you go after al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan? Goes to Obama who justifies what he said at one of the first debates. He moves from the defensive to the offensive against Bush but Gibson says he sounds just like Bush.

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The Republicans have started. The Dems follow immediately after.

This is an Open Thread.

Wyoming held its Republican caucuses today. Mitt Romney won.

The former Massachusetts governor won eight delegates, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson got two and California Rep. Duncan Hunter won one, meaning no other candidate could beat Romney. Caucuses were still being held to decide all 12 delegates at stake.

Wyoming only gets 14 delegates at the national convention as a penalty for bumping up the date.

Wyoming Republicans also paid a price for jumping ahead. The Republican National Committee has slashed half of Wyoming's 28 national convention delegates. National party leaders similarly penalized Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire and South Carolina for moving up the dates of their nomination contests.

Romney's son owns a ranch in Wyoming and he and his sons visited the state, although Romney hasn't been there since November. McCain and Giuliani didn't bother to visit.

A poll taken last night and today by CNN and WMUR in New Hampshire has Hillary and Obama tied at 33% each. The AP report on the poll is here.

Obama and Edwards are up 3 points from last week while Hillary is down 1 point.

Full poll results are here. (pdf)

There's a vast difference between Hillary and Obama on the experience question.

(DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS ONLY:) Which Democratic candidate do you think has the right experience to be President?

Clinton 46%
Obama 14%
Edwards 13%

As to which candidate is most likely to bring change, the numbers are almost reversed: Obama 41%, Clinton 28%, Edwards 16%

Update [2008-1-5 18:16:37 by Big Tent Democrat]: Research 2000 shows a tie also: [More....]

ARG reflects a big Iowa bounce for Barack Obama:

Obama 38 (31)
Clinton 26 (35)
Edwards 20 (15)
Richardson 3 (5)

ARG claims that this reflected polling on the 4th and 5th. Today is the 5th. I have not heard of polling on Saturday mornings. That said, this is the bounce I expected. this would be Obama's best polling period. It will be interesting to see if Edwards goes up from here. Honestly, I do not see it at all. But I have been wrong before.

Bennett of ARG is predicting that 37% of the primary participants will be Independent. Obama wins them overwhelmingly. He splits Democrats with Hillary. This is where Hillary can do better imo. She needs to win Democrats convincingly. And she needs McCain to do better with Independents. McCain seems to be attracting much less of the Independent vote than Obama is. ARG has McCain in a big lead over Romney in NH based on a large lead among Republicans as well as Independents.

The DEA is about to hire 200 new special drug agents:

Michele M. Leonhart, DEA Acting Administrator, announced last week that the funding provided in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (H.R. 2764), will allow DEA to lift an agency-wide hiring freeze that was instituted in August 2006.

"This is an important and most welcome development," Leonhart said. "With this much-needed funding, DEA will be able to fill 200 Special Agent positions, as well as many vacant Intelligence Analyst and critical support positions. This legislation sends a strong and encouraging message to all of us at DEA as we continue our worldwide drug law enforcement mission."

President Bush signed H.R. 2764 into law on December 26, 2007. It provides funding for fiscal 2008, which began October 1, 2007.

The House vote on the bill is here and the Senate's here.

Both Hillary and Obama voted against the bill, although not for that reason. The DEA funding was but a tiny part.

This is good news all around. Good for Hillary for rejecting the awful advice from the Mark Penn contingent in her camp and good for Democrats - no need to run down the likely nominee:

The Hillary campaign, which has promised a sharpening of "contrast" between her and Obama in the days ahead, appears to have concluded that they won't be running any ads against Obama in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday

Here is some news for Penn - that won't work in South Carolina either.

Hilary needs to run a campaign focused on her strengths playing to her partisan base (in itself an implict contrast to Obama) and let the chips fall where they may. Win or lose, be proud of your campaign. She is better than a cheap, tawdry Mark Penn led campaign.

New Hampshire's Secretary of State Richard Gardner is predicting a record turnout for Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.

Gardner estimates 500,000 — or 60 percent of the 830,684 registered voters — will cast ballots....The most votes cast in a presidential primary — 396,385 — were cast in 2000.

Here's the stats on registered voters as of Friday:

Of the 830,684 on the voter list, 373,397 or 45 percent are undeclared; 243,914 or 29 percent are Republican; and 213,373 or 26 percent are Democrats.

As betweens Dems and Republicans, factoring in the undeclared voters: [More...]

From primary and caucus coverage, I like reading local news sources. Here's a group of New Hampshire print media sites with an online presence (courtesy of the Free State Project):

• the Seacoast Media Group, which publishes The Exeter News-Letter, The Hampton Union, Herald Sunday, The Portsmouth Herald, The Dover Community News, The York Weekly, The York County Coast Star, and The Rockingham News.
• Berlin Reporter (NE. NH),
• the Carroll County Independent (N. NH),
• the Concord Monitor,
• Coos County Democrat (N. NH),
• Courier-Littleton (N. NH),
• Foster's Online,
• Granite State News (E. NH),
• the Meredith News (Central NH),
• Nashua Telegraph (Nashua & S. NH),
• Record Enterprise (Central NH),
• the Union Leader, and
• the Valley News (Upper Valley).

The Zogby Tracker:

Clinton 32 (32)
Obama 28 (26)
Edwards 20 (20)
Richardson 7 (7)

In essence, a little Iowa movement to Obama. But this is Zogby so I do not trust him. He is already predicting big Iowa bounce. I hate a pollster who predicts what his own poll will do the next day. For a more serious poll, here is the Suffolk Tracker:

Clinton 36 (37)
Obama 29 (25)
Edwards 13 (17)
Richardson 4 (4)

As you can see, this poll is showing Iowa bounce. But all the bad news is for Edwards. Hillary has not dropped significantly yet. Indeed, if Hillary can hang on like she did the first night, she has a better shot than I would have thought. She has the debate tonight, which could easily halt the Iowa bounce.

Let me say this, I am surprised the Iowa bounce is not bigger already. This race in New Hampshire may be more up in the air than I thought. In the GOP race, Romney has MOVED UP since Iowa. Huckabee is up a bit but not much and McCain seems stagnant.

Maybe New Hampshire is poised to confound CW on the Iowa bounce.

Update [2008-1-5 12:41:24 by Big Tent Democrat]: Rassmussen does a one day poll last night and reports the results. Obama by 10.

In running through the Iowa results by county (map here, alphabetical list here), it's clear Obama outdid Hillary the most in the more densely populated urban areas like those around Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport. Comparing the counties where the vote numbers were in the thousands, like Johnson and Black Hawk, to Iowa as a whole using census results, there's some interesting numbers which could be bad news for Hillary in South Carolina -- an early voting state the media keeps saying will turn on the African American vote.

Iowa is mostly white, 95%. But the counties with thousands of voters and in which Obama trounced Hillary have higher percentages of non-white voters and fewer older voters.

For example, according to the census reports:

• Black Hawk County with 126,000 people is 8.1 percent African-American compared to the state wide African-American population of 2.1 %. It's white populaton is 89% compared to 94.6% state wide. 13.7% live below the poverty line (compared with 10.5% state wide). In yesterday's caucus vote, Black Hawk went 43% for Obama and only 28% for Hillary. Edwards came in third with 27%.

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