Iowa Blogosphere 2008 Hotlist

When I got home from work on Friday, I got the idea of coming up a ranking system of all of the 2008 Hotlists that Iowa bloggers put together last week. I messed around with it a bit and decided to go do something fun. Today I noticed that Drew Miller had the same idea and even used the same scoring system that I did. Here is what Drew wrote.

This is from me, Chris Woods, Patrick, and John Deeth. I skipped Kyle's because it is pretty much not a hotlist at all. I just assigned 3 points to hot, 2 points to warm, and 1 point to everything below.

Here are the most-supported candidates, in order, in this very unscientific test.

#1 (tie): John Edwards and Barack Obama. Everyone listed these two guys as hot. They are going to be competing for a lot of the same voters in Iowa, so it will be interesting to see if Obama can maintain his popularity and if Edwards' supporters stick with him.

#3 (tie): Al Gore and Tom Vilsack. Old Man Deeth hates Gore, but the rest of us young pups are big fans. Talking to a lot of Story County Democrats during the campaign though, I don't get the impression that this demographic trend would hold up to scrutiny. He's popular with most of the local activists here. Vilsack has strong support from Chris and I and moderate support from Patrick and John.

#4: Bill Richardson. John is the only guy Bonkers for Bill, while the rest of us are willing to be excited about him. He needs to spend more time in Iowa for people to really get to know him.

#5 (tie): Wes Clark and Chris Dodd. Dodd has across-the-board warms. He hasn't been a national figure in the way some of the other Senators considering a run have, which is generally a positive thing. Clark has been around and has done a lot for a lot of candidates, but he just doesn't seem to be taking off anywhere.

#7: Hillary Clinton. Chris and Patrick both despise her. I don't think we've gotten a very accurate portrayal of her yet, given that both the blogs and the newspapers tend to focus on stupid shit instead of giving us an overall picture of her work in the Senate or as first lady.

#8 (tie): Evan Bayh and John Kerry. Nobody likes these guys. But they aren't universally reviled, like...

#10: Joe Biden. He is cold on everyone's list. Ouch!

Yeah this is four white dudes from Iowa who are dorkier than the average Iowan. Got a problem? Leave your own list in the comments!

I also recommend reading Kyle's take on the candidates. He wrote a not-so-hotlist and has some good insight. I agree with a lot of it, but was a little more optimistic in my hotlist.