Source: Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/)
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/19/AR2007111900940.html
Title: "For Democrats, Iowa Still Up for Grabs", by Anne E. Kornblut and Jon Cohen
Date: November 20, 2007


Survey says ...

The top three Democratic presidential contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key issues, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared to handle the war in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) draws support from 30 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, compared with 26 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for former senator John Edwards (N.C.). New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson received 11 percent. The results are only marginally different from a Post-ABC poll in late July, but in a state likely to set the tone for the rest of the nominating process, there are significant signs of progress for Obama -- and harbingers of concern for Clinton.

The factors that have made Clinton the clear national front-runner -- including her overwhelming leads on the issues of the Iraq war and health care, a widespread sense that she is the Democrats' most electable candidate, and her strong support among women -- do not appear to be translating on the ground in Iowa, where campaigning is already fierce and television ads have been running for months.

(Kornblut and Cohen ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/19/AR2007111900940.html))

The numbers:

Overall (margin ±4%)

• Obama 30%
• Clinton 26%
• Edwards 22%

Candidate of Change

• Obama 43%
• Edwards 25%
• Clinton 17%

Strength and Experience

• Clinton 38%
• Edwards 19%
• Richardson 18%
• Obama 12%

File this next under, N, for "No sh@t, Sherlock":

[Clinton] appears more vulnerable on questions of character. Thirty-one percent found Obama to be the most honest and trustworthy, about double the percentage who said the same of Clinton. While about three-quarters credited both Obama and Edwards with speaking their mind on issues, only 50 percent said Clinton is willing enough to say what she really thinks. Forty-five percent said she is not sufficiently candid.

(ibid)

And a pretty (not really) graphic:

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/11/20/GR2007112000108.gif (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/19/AR2007111900940.html)

Now, I recognize that all eyes are on Hillary Clinton, but this comparison with "national" polling is just part of the media's love affair with the former First Lady and current New York Senator. But here's the thing: national polls are useless. There is no national vote for president. This is even more apparent if you hop over to William L. Watts' summary at MarketWatch (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/clinton-obama-edwards-iowa-dead/story.aspx?guid=%7B2214F945-AA38-4270-B99D-CE4B7F37A03F%7D). Compare these to Dan Balz's (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/11/20/post_205.html) analysis, in which mention of national polls is preceded by words like "discount" and "in contrast to". It's a small but important difference.

Additionally, I'm not sure what Hillary Clinton's campaign expects to accomplish by alleging ignorance among Iowa voters who take pride in being a tough state to win:

As if to signal where the Clinton campaign may be heading, Penn observed, "They know very little about Senator Obama and so his numbers are in particular subject to a lot of change. Most voters don't even realize he was in the state senate three years ago and never voted on Iraq."

(Balz (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/11/20/post_205.html))

I wonder if he's got survey numbers on that?
____________________

See Also:

Watts, William L. "3-way Democratic dead heat in Iowa". MarketWatch.com. November 20, 2007. See http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/clinton-obama-edwards-iowa-dead/story.aspx?guid=%7B2214F945-AA38-4270-B99D-CE4B7F37A03F%7D

Balz, Dan. "The Iowa Three-Way Race". The Trail. November 20, 2007. See http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/11/20/post_205.html

Source: Des Moines Register (http://www.desmoinesregister.com)
Link: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071201/NEWS09/71130037/-1/iowapoll07
Title: "Huckabee new GOP leader in Iowa Poll", by Jonathan Roos
Date: December 1, 2007


It's all coming together for the guy who "drinks a different kind of Jesus juice (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-huckabee2dec02,1,163576.story)", as the Chuck Norris-endorsed man who Ric Flair calls "the man" moves into first place in Iowa. The latest numbers from the Des Moines Register give the former Arkansas governor a five-point edge over Mitt Romney, defying the 4.4% margin of error.

Perhaps this is a reminder of the GOP's 2004 denunciation of Massachusetts. Alternatively, it could be a reflection on Mitt Romney, and also Mike Huckabee.

The numbers:

Republicans

• Mike Huckabee 29%
• Mitt Romney 24%
• Rudy Giuliani 13%
• Fred Thompson 9%
• John McCain 7%
• Ron Paul 7%
• Tom Tancredo 6%
• Undecided 4%
• Duncan Hunter 1%
• Alan Keyes <1%

Democrats

• Barack Obama 28%
• Hillary Clinton 25%
• John Edwards 23%
• Bill Richardson 9%
• Undecided 7%
• Joe Biden 6%
• Christopher Dodd 1%
• Dennis Kucinich 1%
• Mike Gravel <1%

While there's not much new in the Democratic field, Huckabee's lead is the story from this poll. This latest showing by the former Arkansas governor is a confirmation of the changing conventional wisdom among pundits. Paul Constant wrote, in the wake of the recent GOP YouTube/CNN debate:

’ve been saying this from the very beginning. The first time I put anything down on the record was on August 12, but I’d been saying for months before that: Mike Huckabee is the most dangerous Republican in the race. He’s charming (Rolling Stone and The New Yorker have both given the man big, sloppy blowjobs in the last two weeks), he’s super-Christian, he plays in a rock and roll band, and he apparently has a sense of humor. Plus he’s got a diet book, and I think that any presidential candidate with a diet book automatically earns an extra ten points at the polls. He’s the guy you’d most want to have a lite beer with.

I would like to retract one thing that I wrote from the August 12th Slog post that I wrote, though. I said:
I don’t think that Huckabee will ultimately get the nomination
and I think that he could actually get the nomination now. But if, as I think might happen, the compressed primary schedule renders Iowa fairly irrelevant, he could at least wind up on the ticket as a Vice President.

Sure, he’s got a bunch of scandals. But they’re almost all money scandals, and thanks to CNN’s inability to compress them into ten-second soundbites, money scandals don’t stick anymore: Whitewater and Bush’s various charges of nepotism amounted to a hill of beans. And sure, he believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old, but again, the nightly news has somehow managed to convince us that half of America believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old. He has his weird Ron-Paul-like hatred of the IRS, but I’m thinking that some good aides can probably compress that into an "I hate taxes" soundbite that will appeal to many uninformed Republicans ....

(Constant (http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/hes_the_demon_clone_baby_of_bill_clinton))

Over at the Arkansas News Bureau, John Brummett wrote on November 27:

One of the national writers putting together a profile of Mike Huckabee asked how it might be that this preacher showed such an affinity for popular culture.

The Chuck Norris alliance, the tailgate party in South Carolina with the wrestler, the pardon for Keith Richards, the playing of bass guitar in a rock cover band offering Lynyrd Skynyrd - isn't all that out of character for a man from the Southern Baptist pulpit?

Actually, Huckabee was a radio man before he was a preacher and he has remained more decidedly a media man than a pulpit man.

His superficially likable nature, which provides the essence of his oddly succeeding presidential campaign, comes via a disc jockey's shtick rather than a pastor's. I refer to the rich intonations of his professional voice, the music, the hip topicality, the impersonations, the jokes, the Mr. Glib.

It can't be those radical policies. Outlawing abortion altogether, not merely leaving it to the states, is extreme. A national sales tax to replace the income tax is a gimmick, either scandalously regressive or entirely too difficult to design so that it wouldn't be. He barely scratches the surface on foreign policy with what got described over the weekend as "cheerful know-nothingness." He denies the better points of his record in Arkansas, since they're entirely too moderate for modern Republican primary voters.

His is wholly a candidate of personality, and, as such, is more Don Imus than Billy Graham.

Yes, Imus. Huckabee can be mean and inappropriate. It usually doesn't get revealed until the second impression. He's still making his first out there on the trail.

(Brummett (http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2007/11/27/JohnBrummett/344167.html))

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, David Horsey, noted, in the wake of Huckabee's performance at the debate:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20071130/cartoon20071130.gif (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1678)
David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 30, 2007.

We may be seeing here a beginning. Mike Huckabee may well be emerging as the GOP candidate for 2008. And, while it seems difficult for commentators to say something nice about the man or his campaign without couching it in criticism (see Brummett, Constant above), the bass-playing SBC minister ought to take comfort in these signs of having arrived at the big time. Two reasonable questions remain, however.

First is the question of electability. While Huckabee's outlook certainly appeals to many born-again Christians—

The Register's new scientific poll shows Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, leading Romney 38 percent to 22 percent among those who consider themselves born-again Christians. In October, Romney edged Huckabee 23 percent to 18 percent among people in that group, which accounts for one-half of all likely caucus participants.

(Roos (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071201/NEWS09/71130037/-1/iowapoll07))

—certain aspects of that appeal might endanger his appeal to voters in the general election. Young-earth creationism and absolutism in the abortion debate (see Constant, Brummett above) may not play well in the swing bloc. As a result, Roos notes,

The complexion of the race could easily change in the last month of intense campaigning ahead of the caucuses, which lead off the presidential nominating process. Roughly six in 10 likely Republican caucus participants say they could still be persuaded to support another candidate. Poll participant Thelma Whittaker, a retired teacher from Columbus Junction, is leaning toward supporting Huckabee in the caucuses but also could back Romney.

"I'm a very conservative Republican and I feel that (Huckabee) follows through with those ideas," said Whittaker, who is troubled by the country's moral decline. On the other hand, she wonders if Huckabee is a strong enough candidate to win the White House for the GOP.

When it comes to Romney, "I go along with a lot of his ideas,'" Whittaker said, "but he's also done some flip-flopping that scares me on issues like abortion and taxes."

(ibid (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071201/NEWS09/71130037/-1/iowapoll07))

Some other figures worth pointing out (see Roos):

• Huckabee leads 2-1 over Romney among GOP voters who prefer a social conservative to a fiscal conservative.
• Huckabee leads Romney among men, 28-20%; they are a dead-heat among women.
• Romney has the younger crowd (18-34), Huckabee the midlife (35-54), and the candidates are virtually tied among the 55+ crowd.
• Huckabee is viewed as the most socially conservative, most civil, and the most principled GOP candidate.
• Giuliani is seen as the most electable in November, 2008, and is also considered to appear the most presidential.
• At the same time, Giuliani is seen as the most ego-driven and polarizing of the GOP candidates; 34% consider him as the worst choice for the GOP ticket, with Ron Paul coming in second at 26%.
• Ron Paul scored a 44% unfavorable rating, Giuliani 38%.
• Huckabee and Fred Thompson tied for being the candidate who is most like Ronald Reagan.
• Huckabee polled a mere 4% in Iowa in May, 2007.

____________________

See Also

Fausset, Richard. "Huckabee: 'a different kind of jesus juice'". LATimes.com. December 2, 2007. See http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-huckabee2dec02,1,163576.story

Constant, Paul. "He’s The Demon Clone Baby of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush". Slog. November 30, 2007. See http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/hes_the_demon_clone_baby_of_bill_clinton

Brummett, John. "Disc jokey for president". Arkansas News Bureau. November 27, 2007. See http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2007/11/27/JohnBrummett/344167.html

Horsey, David. "He Found a Jockey". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. November 30, 2007. See http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1678

So.
Are there any Democratic polls showing only the candidates that have a shot in hell of winning?
You know.
White males?

The Republicans have to be loving this farce. Especially if the Dems are stupid enough to go all the way with it.

But, I'd love to be wrong. Would be nice to get past the sexism/racism. But, what do you think?

See what happens? I take a couple of days off in the wake of a Queens of the Stone Age concert, and I miss a poll. Not that it's a particularly good poll, as The Stranger's Eli Sanders (http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/12/slog_poll_who_do_you_want_to_be_the_demo_1) admits. But on the question of the Democratic nominee, 1,633 respondents over a thirty-two hour period on Dec. 18-19 established the following result:

Edwards 44%
Obama 30%
Clinton 14%
Kucinich 6%
Dodd 2%
Gravel 2%
Richardson 2%
Biden 1%

I wonder how many of those people are registered voters. I wonder how many of them intend to actually vote. Oh, right. We're a caucus state, so ... Clinton it is.

So.
Are there any Democratic polls showing only the candidates that have a shot in hell of winning? You know.White males?The Republicans have to be loving this farce. Especially if the Dems are stupid enough to go all the way with it.
But, I'd love to be wrong. Would be nice to get past the sexism/racism. But, what do you think?

B HUSSEIN Obama's race isn't his problem. His religion is.

B HUSSEIN Obama's race isn't his problem. His religion is.

christianity?

Please, don't get her started. Just let it go...

christianity?

Countezero is right.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6435/sugdu0.jpg

Can someone explain to me what the strength actually means in the strength and experience poll?

So.
Are there any Democratic polls showing only the candidates that have a shot in hell of winning?
You know.
White males?

The Republicans have to be loving this farce. Especially if the Dems are stupid enough to go all the way with it.

But, I'd love to be wrong. Would be nice to get past the sexism/racism. But, what do you think?

National polls (sorry no link, had seen on TV) have had Clinton and Obama beating all Republican candidates individually except for McCain, who Clinton lost to and Obama tied, and Edwards beat.

I don't know if racism is strong enough to actually make Obama unelectable, but I don't want to choose who my candidate is just to cater to the stupidest people in the country.