The first political decision of 2016 in the nation has come and gone, we now know who won both sides. Ted Cruz pulled an upset and took the GOP vote, with a rather unexpected 6,000 vote lead.

Trump came out a slim second place finisher, and hot on his heels was Marco Rubio finishing in a close third place and giving a bombastic speech as if he had been granted the presidency right then and there.

On the other side, the Democrats found themselves in a dead heat, with the vote slowly trickling in until the next morning, when Hillary Clinton was declared the winner. It was an exciting race, but where does that lead us?

Now we follow the candidates to New Predications for the upcoming caucus that could change the election Hampshire, who have already made a mad dash to beat each other there. They will campaign just as hard, some even more diligently then before. But have these caucus results changed the game in any way?

We already know that two candidates, Huckabee and O’Malley, have suspended their campaigns, but those were undercard candidates by a long shot, and had little impact on the outcome of the campaign. It’s come down to essentially this: Clinton v. Sanders and Cruz v. Trump v. Rubio. There have been some serious developments going into the nation’s first primary.

Many saw the Democrat caucus results as rather a loss for Clinton, despite winning by a slim margin. A select few, including me, see it as an advantage. She now has the power to move initially unmotivated supporters into action, since this past vote was so close.

She also may be getting some of the O’Malley supporters, although that can be said for Sanders, too. She may still lose the New Hampshire primaries, but it may be by a smaller margin.

It also fares well as we go into Nevada and a week later, South Carolina, where Clinton holds a near firewall of support from majority African American voters. I foresee trouble for the Sanders campaign once they get out of New Hampshire, and enter states with more minority demographics.

I predict that Hillary Clinton will have a near loss in New Hampshire, a lean win in Nevada, and a fairly strong win in South Carolina.

The results on the GOP side are as uncertain, as they are surprising. Cruz beat Trump in Iowa, and in my opinion, this is the thing that could break Trump’s iron grip on the GOP nomination. If he had won, I foresaw him sweeping the nation as voters got caught up in Trump-fever.

Now Cruz can catch him in early states, and Rubio, a true comeback kid who was largely ignored by the Trump campaign, is catching quick momentum.

I predict that New Hampshire will be a smaller win for Trump than what has been expected, Nevada will be a toss-up, and South Carolina will shift into a dogfight between Cruz and Rubio, with Trump vying for third.

I’ll be back with a February recap and a Super Tuesday prediction in a couple of weeks