Kerry scores huge win in Iowa

6.00pm - UPDATE

DES MOINES, Iowa - Democrat John Kerry has capped a stunning political comeback with a victory in Iowa's caucuses that dramatically reshaped the Democratic presidential race and ended Richard Gephardt's White House quest.

In the first test on the road to find a challenger to President George W. Bush, Kerry won 38 per cent and John Edwards scored a surprise second-place finish with 32 per cent of the vote. One-time favourites Howard Dean and Gephardt trailed with 18 and 11 per cent, respectively, in nearly complete returns.

The win was a huge boost for Kerry, the four-term senator from Massachusetts and decorated Vietnam War veteran who weeks ago was lagging in the polls and given up for dead but roared back into the race with an emphasis on his foreign policy experience and ability to beat Bush.

"Thank you Iowa for making me the comeback Kerry," he told supporters in Des Moines, a reference to former President Bill Clinton's designation as "the comeback kid" after his showing in the 1992 New Hampshire primary when he had been down in the polls.

Edwards, the senator from North Carolina who also was mired in the single digits in polls weeks ago, won new life after stressing a positive domestic agenda and staying out of the race's bitter attacks.

Both Kerry and Edwards benefited by arguing they offered the best chance to beat Bush, which television network caucus polls showed was an important issue with Iowa Democrats.

The result dealt crushing blows to Dean and particularly Gephardt, one-time favourites who were left behind by their rivals' late surges.

Gephardt, the congressman from neighbouring Missouri and one-time leader in Iowa polls, cancelled his planned flight to New Hampshire, site of the next primary a week from now, and dropped out.

"My campaign to fight for working people may be ending tonight, but our fight will never end," said an emotional Gephardt, who won Iowa during his first presidential bid in 1988 and had said a loss here would end his campaign.

The loss by Dean, the former Vermont governor who had been considered the party's front-runner based on big fund raising and a series of major endorsements, opens the door for other candidates and turned what was shaping up to be a quick Dean victory into a dogfight.

"We will not give up," a fiery Dean said, letting out a whoop as he recited the states with later primaries that he promised to compete in. "We have just begun to fight." At his side was Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, whose recent endorsement did little to help Dean.

More than 100,000 Democrats braved sub-freezing temperatures on Monday night to attend one of nearly 2,000 local precinct caucuses around the state and publicly declare their support for a candidate.

Iowa State Democratic Party Chairman Gordon Fischer said he believed turnout would be about 120,000, a huge jump over the 60,000 who participated in 2000.

Kerry and Edwards have risen in the polls in the last week as voters took a fresh look at the candidates after the holidays, evaluating which one had the best chance to beat Bush in November and responding negatively to an exchange of harsh attack ads by Dean and Gephardt.

"For Iowa Democrats, the key question was who could beat President Bush?" Fischer said. "Electability was everything in Iowa."

Edwards described his campaign as "the little engine that could. We made this work and the reason it worked, I think, was the message," he said. He had stressed a positive agenda and stayed out of the increasingly bitter exchanges between the front-runners.

Kerry had stressed his foreign policy experience and domestic agenda of expanded health care and a reversal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Turnout was expected to be crucial, and all four campaigns sent thousands of volunteers across Iowa. But in the end, momentum trumped organisation, as the two candidates who were advancing in the polls all week trounced the two candidates whose voter mobilisation efforts had been trumpeted as among the best in Iowa history.

After New Hampshire, the race turns national, with seven contests scheduled across the country on February 3 and caucuses set for February 7 in Michigan and Washington state.

Dean is not only under siege in Iowa but has seen his once huge lead trimmed in New Hampshire, with Kerry and retired Gen. Wesley Clark closing in. Clark and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman were not competing in Iowa.

- REUTERS