Obama campaign picks up additional delegates out of Iowa now that the state caucus process is officially complete. Don’t ask me to explain all the details, but broadly speaking the Iowa caucuses were projected to yield 16 delegates for Obama but at the state convention he actually wound up snagging more like 21. Some kind of similar process where caucuses projections need to be turned into actual delegate counts is going to play out elsewhere.

Political journalists, being journalists, tend to focus on campaign happenings and controversies as a key determinant of election outcomes. Research, however, indicates that most people vote as dogmatic partisans and that most of the election-to-election variance can be explained by macroeconomic trends. Some elections, obviously, are very close and thus “the campaign” turns out to have been a decisive figure, but even in these cases a very close election like the 2000 election featured so many “important” campaign factors (Bush’s coverup of his DUI citation, Gore sighing in the debate, Bush not knowing the names of foreign leaders, the press insisting that Gore claimed to have invented the internet, etc.) that it’s hard to believe that any one of them was actually all that important.

Primary campaign voters, by contrast, are more fickle because there’s much less underlying difference between the contenders. And one thing primary voters look at is electability, and another thing they look at is elite support and elites look a lot at electability. Voters and elites alike, meanwhile, like reporters, tend to wildly overestimate the importance of contingent campaign happenstance on election outcomes. Consequently, a primary season campaign gaffe that’s seen as potentially harmful during the general election is arguably more likely to hurt you in the primary because of the perception that it’ll hurt you in the general than it is to actually hurt you in the general election.

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AP reports:

Al-Qaida is in Iraq to stay. It’s not a conclusion the White House talks about much when denouncing the shadowy group, known as al-Qaida in Iraq, that used the U.S. invasion five years ago to develop into a major killer.

The militants are weakened, battered, perhaps even desperate, by most U.S. accounts. But far from being “routed,” as Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed last month, they’re still there, still deadly active and likely to remain far into the future, military and other officials told The Associated Press. [...]

Al-Qaida in Iraq, which did not exist as a coherent group before U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, probably now numbers no more than 6,000, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.

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Faiz Shakir is a Vice President at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor-in-Chief of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report. He holds a B.A. degree in Government from Harvard University and a J.D. degree from the Georgetown Law Center. Faiz has previously worked as a Research Associate for the Democratic National Committee, as a Legislative Aide to Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and as a communications aide in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Faiz is co-author of Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform. He also authored a chapter entitled “Blogging the election” in The Change We Need: What Britain Can Learn from Obama’s Victory. His writings have been published in the Jerusalem Post, Florida Today, and Salon. Faiz has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and CNBC television, among other places, and has been a guest on many radio shows. (E-mail Faiz HERE.)

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Benjamin J. Armbruster is National Security Editor for ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Ben grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Ohio University and a master’s degree in international relations from King’s College London. Ben previously served as a national security research assistant at the Center for American Progress and has also held research positions at Media Matters for America; the Henry L. Stimson Center; and the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre in London. His work has been published in online and print outlets as well as various international security journals.

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Ali Gharib is a National Security Reporter for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Ali holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston College in Philosophy, an M.S. from the London School of Economics in Philosophy and Public Policy, and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University. Prior to joining the Center, Ali reported on U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East for Inter Press Service, where he served as deputy Washington bureau chief, and other outlets including the Columbia Journalism Review, PBS/Frontline’s Tehran Bureau, ForiegnPolicy.com, and AlterNet.

Eli Clifton is a National Security Reporter for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Eli holds a bachelors degree from Bates College and a masters degree in International Political Economy from The London School of Economics. He previously reported on U.S. foreign policy for Inter Press Service, where he served as deputy Washington bureau chief. His work has appeared on PBS/Frontline’s Tehran Bureau, The South China Morning Post, Right Web, Asia Times, LobeLog.com and ForeignPolicy.com.

Matthew Duss is a National Security Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Matthew holds a master’s degree in Middle East Studies from the University of Washington. Prior to joining the Center, he was a research intern for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a blogger for The American Prospect. Matthew grew up in Nyack, New York.

Josh Dorner is the Communications Director for Progressive Media. brings four years of experience heading up communications strategy and media for all of the Sierra Club’s energy and global warming work, as well as its other federal legislative campaigns and political work. He also served as deputy communications director at the Clean Energy Works campaign. Prior to Sierra Club, Josh worked as an account executive at a PR firm that primarily served nonprofits, independent film distributors, and other arts projects. Josh graduated from Grinnell College with honors degrees in political science and French. He also holds a master of science in European politics and governance from the London School of Economics.