Obama Wins Iowa

A few percentage points behind are Edwards and Clinton in a virtual tie.

The main storylines: Colossal turnout. Young voters, indepdendents come out for Obama. Caucus-goers say they want candidate who will bring change.

Over on the GOP side, Mike Huckabee has a surprisingly large win over Mitt Romney.

More later, after I meet my deadline for the dead-tree edition. But amid all this breathlessness, here’s some much-needed perspective from UNC’s Southern politics expert Ferrel Guillory, with whom I just spoke. Guillory’s reaction:

It’s a relatively small Midwestern state, and I’m not diminishing it, but this is a race where American voters need to know more about all these candidates. This is a race that in my view needs to go on for several weeks. It’s too early, it seems to me, to crown anyone the nominee. And Sen. Edwards has still got an uphill climb. He didn’t come in first. But he didn’t fall back into the second tier either. And so if he can continue raising money, and if he can continue engaging directly in debate with senators Obama and Clinton, he still has some time to let people take a look at his potential as a Democratic nominee and as a possible president.