James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama wheels and deals

One of the many quirks of the Democrat’s Iowa Caucus is that if your candidate gets less than 15% support, you can choose to shift your support to another candidate. The conventional wisdom is that this isn’t good for Hillary who is effectively the incumbent in this race and so Edwards and Obama are expected to pick up the lion’s share of these second preferences.

The buzz today is that Obama has reached a deal with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson so that where Richardson, who polls in the high single digits, that where Richardson has less than 15% support his precinct captains will urge his supporters to back Obama. In exchange, Obama will lend any spare votes to Richardson—who needs to come fourth if his presidential bid is to credibly continue.

Dennis Kucinch, a minor Democratic candidate, has already urged his supporters to get behind Obama where he is not viable.

I’ll be at the Obama event later on this evening and will be live-blogging from there as the results come in.

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