In a surprising twist last night, Senator John Kerry won 38 percent of the vote during Iowa's 2,000 caucuses.
These results advanced Kerry above Senator John Edwards, who took 32 percent of the vote, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who took 18 percent of the vote.
Representative Richard Gephardt, who received only 11 percent, placing him fourth, subsequently considered withdrawing from the presidential race.
Student supporters of all major political parties seemed excited by the news.
Dan Gomez, chairman of the College Republicans and a junior in the College, said he would favor a Bush-Kerry matchup.
"I think Bush would slaughter Kerry," the former Daily Pennsylvanian columnist said.
President of the College Democrats Richard Eisenberg also seemed enthralled by the political interest the caucuses can generate.
"The race is getting really exciting," he said, adding that "it's a good time for students to get involved on campus."
"We've seen from the late surges how dramatically things can change in the race," Eisenberg added.
Iowa native Erica Garvey said that the results generated even stronger reactions back in Iowa.
"It's a really big deal ... it saturates the media," the Wharton sophomore said. "It's a really primitive system but it's something we're proud of back home."
Eisenberg, a junior in the College, was also very interested in the political repercussions of the results.
"I'm positive that any [of the leading Democratic candidates] can beat Bush," Eisenberg said.
On the other side of the political spectrum, David Copley, a Wharton junior and state chairman of the Students for Bush campaign, was in disagreement.
The former DP columnist cited Howard Dean as influencing the Democratic party negatively by "dragging them to the left," making the Democrats "way out of touch with the mainstream of American society."
Copley favors Dean as the Democratic candidate because "he has absolutely no prayer of beating Bush."
"If the Democratic party would like to jump off a cliff, we'd certainly like to give them a little push," he said, predicting a Bush over Dean landslide if the two ended up competing for the presidency.
Wharton and Engineering freshman David Liu will be watching when the primaries continue next week.
"New Hampshire has always kind of been the renegade primary," he said.
