Iowa

I was wondering if the candidates could attend the Iowa carcasses, and the AP has the answer:

Iowans rendered their judgments in meetings at 1,781 precincts from Adel to Zwingle, in schools, firehouses and community centers where the candidates themselves could not follow.

Some hard numbers, as of late Thursday night:

• Projections estimated that 220,588 Democrats showed up on a cold midwinter's night, shattering the previous mark of 124,000. Turnout was also up on the Republican side, where projections showed about 114,000 people taking part. The last previous contested Republican caucuses in 2000 drew 87,666 participants.
  
  
• Obama also outpolled Clinton among women, and benefited from a surge in first-time caucus-goers. More than half of those who participated said they had never been to a caucus before, and Obama won the backing of roughly 40 percent of them. Edwards did best among veteran caucus-goers, garnering 30 percent of their vote. Obama and Clinton each got about a quarter of their support.
  
  
• An AP analysis of Iowa's Republican caucuses estimated that Huckabee would win 30 delegates to the national convention and Romney would win 7.
  Obama's victory was much narrower in the race for delegates. The AP analysis estimated Obama would win 16 delegates, compared to 15 for Clinton and 14 for Edwards. Clinton will win more delegates than Edwards, despite getting fewer votes, because of Iowa's complicated caucus system.
  
  
• In the overall race for the nomination, Clinton leads with 175 delegates, including superdelegates, followed by Obama with 75 and Edwards with 46.

And this interesting item:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio publicly urged his backers to line up with Obama on a second round, and two Democrats said aides to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson did likewise as the caucuses unfolded.