Whatever happens in the caucuses Tuesday night, Michele Bachmann can claim one more Iowa political victory: the Coffee Bean Caucus from Hamburg Inn in Iowa City. Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman, was the top Republican vote-getter in the informal, bean-based poll at the iconic Iowa City diner, winning 28.8 percent of the GOP vote.
Mitt Romney was second with 21.4 percent, followed by Ron Paul (18.2 percent), Newt Gingrich (13.8 percent), Rick Perry (7.4 percent), Rick Santorum (5.6 percent) and Jon Huntsman (4.6 percent). In all, 3,970 Republican beans were cast. But neither Bachmann nor any of the other candidates should celebrate their popularity in famously-liberal Iowa City too much.
Hamburg Inn voters were also given the choice of voting for incumbent Democrat Barack Obama. And they did — 6,442 times. That’s nearly six times the votes cast for Bachmann, who visited the restaurant late last month. When beans dropped for Obama are included with the Republican tallies, he wins in a landslide with 61.8 percent of the vote. Bachmann is the only other candidate to crack double digits, at 11 percent.