The final poll conducted by the Des Moines Register newspaper before the Iowa Caucuses on Thursday is out and Barack Obama has widened his lead over Hillary Clinton while Mike Huckabee continues to outpace Mitt Romney on the Republican side:
Obama was the choice of 32 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers, up from 28 percent in the Register’s last poll in late November, while Clinton, a New York senator, held steady at 25 percent and Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, was virtually unchanged at 24 percent.The poll reflects continued fluidity in the race even as the end of the yearlong campaign nears. Roughly a third of likely caucusgoers say they could be persuaded to choose someone else before Thursday evening. Six percent were undecided or uncommitted.
The poll also reveals a widening gap between the three-way contest for the lead and the remaining candidates. No other Democrat received support from more than 6 percent of likely caucusgoers.
The findings mark the largest lead of any of the Democratic candidates in the Register’s poll all year, underscoring what has been a hard-fought battle among the three well-organized Iowa frontrunners.
Huckabee enjoys a 6 point lead on Romney, 32-26% with John McCain a distant third at 13% and Fred Thompson in fourth with 9%.
A couple of thoughts on this poll that will probably be echoed by some of the campaigns as they try to spin the results to their advantage.
First, I find it striking that observers on the ground in the last 72 hours who have been reporting surges for Hillary and Romney and the consequent drop of Huckabee and Obama are either seeing things or the poll itself is just not accurate. The reason for the latter could be due to the novel experiment of polling during the biggest holiday season of the year.
Polling is a science where methodology is all. What kind of sample? Was it “random” enough? Was it a big enough sample? How do you determine a probable caucus goer? Couple that with the astonishing information that up to a third of those who say they will attend the caucuses could change their mind between now and caucus night and I believe it more than likely that the holidays have been a distraction to the process. It could very well be that a sizable percentage of people will walk into their caucus on Thursday night not knowing who they will support.
I think as an indicator of a general trend, the poll is accurate. Romney and Huckabee are probably pulling away from the rest of the field while Obama is putting a little distance between himself and Hillary/Edwards. But beyond that I don’t know how accurate it is even as a snapshot.
The poll was taken over 4 days – December 27-30 – with 800 “likely” Caucus goers being polled. If you follow the first link to the story on the Democrats and go to the bottom, you’ll find a chart showing how the polling percentages broke down over the 4 days. What you see is a remarkable surge by Obama over those 4 days as late deciders are evidently flocking to his banner while Hillary’s numbers tank over the same period. Obama starts at 29% and ends up at 34% while Hillary starts at 27% and drops to 23%. John Edwards also saw his numbers climb dramatically over the 4 days from 23% to 26%.
This is exactly the opposite of what has been reported on the ground over the last 3 days by many reporters who saw Clinton on the upswing with Edwards peaking and Obama dropping.
So much for our vaunted political press.
For the GOP, Iowa has apparently become a two man race between Romney and Huckabee. Is Huckabee really up by 6 points? Sometimes you can tell more from the candidate’s behavior than you can published polls. They are reacting to internal polling which measures support a little differently than public polls. And the way Huckabee and Romney have been acting would seem to suggest that it is Romney on the rise with Huckabee trying to stop a slide.
For Fredheads, the only good news is that Thompson is the only GOP candidate whose support rose during the entire polling period. But 10% won’t cut it by any means and if that’s the best the candidate can do, I would expect him to drop out on Friday morning.
If polls are considered snapshots of a moment in time, there’s plenty of mud on these photos making it difficult to read. We may as well resign ourselves to the idea that we’re just going to have to wait until late Thursday night to find out the winners and losers.
UPDATE: LET THE SPIN BEGIN
TNR is puzzled by the same things I am:
This totally shatters the CW of the political crowd here in Des Moines, which had been convinced that Edwards was on fire and really might win, and that Huck was totally imploding. (Although the polling stopped yesterday, before today’s Huck presser fiasco.) It also reaffirms my instinct that Fred Thompson isn’t booking a flight to New Hampshire.Update: The Edwards camp is already spinning the numbers—which, as Ben Smith notes, swing a wrecking ball through their “surge” storyline—not unreasonably questioning the accuracy of polling over a holiday weekend, and noting that many respondents remain uncertain of their vote.
In a post over the weekend I cited a campaign operative who worried polling around the holidays would be wacky. But he predicted that variable would undercount traveling young people, doing damage to Obama. If you believe his theory, Obama may be even stronger than this poll shows. But that’s a little hard to believe.
Crowley also believes Fred will drop out on Friday.
Register columnist David Ypsen:
- Undecideds exist. There are 6 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers and 4 percent of the Republicans who have no first choice. Their final decisions will be enough to change the order of finish in both parties. That fact alone should keep anyone from using these polls to forecast the outcome of the race.
- Last-minute developments won’t be reflected. In 2004, 21 percent of those who showed up at Democratic caucuses decided who they’d support in the last three days of the campaign. This poll won’t reflect those decisions because it came out of the field on Sunday night—four days before people vote. So, for example, it can’t reflect the goofy press conference Huckabee held on Monday in which he promised not to run attack ads against Mitt Romney while producing them and showing them to reporters anyway. Right.
- Some support is soft. Of those who have decided on a candidate, 34 percent of the Democrats say they could still be persuaded to change their minds. Among Republicans, it’s 46 percent.
That GOP number reflects a profound dissatisfaction with their choices not, as some would hope, Iowans who can’t make up their minds.
Read the rest of Ypsen’s analysis. It contains some very bad news for Republicans next year as above all, voters are seeking a change.
1:01 am
Even without the issue of polling around the holidays, Iowa probably has any home based land line phone warm enough to cook on from all the various polls trying to get someone to talk to them.
With the quoted percentages of undecideds that more gives credibility to perceived flaws with all candidates rather than the spinning of how much support they have.
If Fred can manage to hold on, with the continued unease for the top tier, this could play into his favor.
It just seems the limited attention span want the election all wrapped up by next week and that doesn’t match at all with the stories last week of the Republicans maybe having to look at a brokered convention.
Not all the stories can be correct.
5:08 am
Why do people consider polls taken by uber-liberal newspapers with huge agendas to be serious affairs?
Think about the following:
1. The DNC has spent far more time slamming Romney than any other candidate. They are clearly most afraid of him. It is clear the DMR HATES Romney.
2. As they are not a “polling company”, they lose nothing if they blow this poll. Professional Pollsters (Rasmussen) on the other hand, have a a lot to lose if they miss by a mile.
3. The DMR endorsed McCain while denouncing every possible conservative value in the same article.
So, if you were the DMR and you wanted to influence the Republican Caucus to meet your agenda, what would YOUR poll look like?
1. Huckabee wins and apparently unhurt by the absolute vitriol of every conervative leader on earth for a month, endless gaffs ands the bozo ad job – no effect.
2. Romney loses by 6 points, just one point more than the 5 points people say his better organization gets him – convenient.
3. McCain surges to take 3rd (helping him beat Romney in NH).
Yep, that’s pretty much what I would do if I were a devious left-wing moonbat with a newspaper.
7:02 am
Having watched this fiasco of a process they have in Iowa any way, one thing that has occurred to me is that I begin to wonder just how they manage to elect anybody for their own state and I am having wonders if they were running could any of these running on either side win against a local for state office.
8:17 am
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting opinion piece on how insanely complex the Democratic caucus rules are and if you link to my site, there are additional comments made by Democratic politicians about how much latitude for chicanery is inserted into the caucus rules.
John Edwards surged in ‘04 as did Kerry and Edwards could pull off a squeaker as the rural precincts are over-represented in the caucus rules and JE has been LIVING in Iowa for most of the last two years.
The DRM poll might be off-base if it discounts the ginormous investments that Edwards & Clinton Inc have made compared to Obama’s merely populist activities. This may also be the reason that Romney pulls off a final victory, although the Republicans’ rules are only a simple anonymous ballot procedure rather than the multi-step Dem process open to manipulation at each step.
Finally, if the weather is amenable, Obama might win. If it is stormy or hyper-frigid, then the well-organized Clinton & Edwards limo-busing activities kick in, especially in the frozen countryside.
Remember the Dems over-represent rural farm & county seat voters & Edwards has been to each Iowa county TWICE in the last two years.
8:24 am
Dave:
Good analysis. I would only add that Obama has a pretty good ground game in Iowa himself. Edwards has organized labor handling his get out the vote organization and Hillary has spent a gazillion bucks on building a powerful statewide group – better than Romney’s. Forecast calls for Pt. cloudy and “cool.”
Plus, the DMR poll shows a whopping 60% of Democratic caucus goers could be first timers. If even 2/3 of those people show up, it’s Obama big.
8:27 am
Slim:
Fred’s only chance is a total meltdown by Huckabee. Judging by the fact that his support remained fairly steady despite his flailing around regarding Pakistan, the Huckster could get caught in bed with a $5 transvestite whore and his blind followers would still vote for him.
9:06 am
From the research I have been doing around the web, those who would know about these things are saying that there are many strange assumptions made in this poll, such as almost double the expected turnout and huge amounts of people switching party affiliation at the last minute.
9:44 am
Multiple other Iowa Polls are coming out even now and they all show Romney ahead.
CNN shows him up by 3.
The DMR Poll will be exposed as bogus.
10:19 am
If this poll is accurate, then the people of Iowa really aren’t very bright.
10:27 am
Pollster had historic data as to how all the polls did in past races plus a recent survey of how the polling companies rate each other. It came out as a sorta mixed bag.
The high undecided factors make you wonder if that could be true after about 2 years of looking at some of the candidates.
I think Iowa takes their king maker simi-pro status as important to their image and they might game the polls just to keep interest focused on them and how important they are to the process just to keep the parties from doing what they should have done long ago and say they are going to replace them with another state that does straight primary voting rather than doing all the game playing.
11:53 am
The DM Register is nothing but a DNC newsletter with TV listings and weather. Republicans here don’t ever trust it. Any poll by them is always suspect. No one can predict with any believability what caucus goers finally decide. How cold and how much snow might. There has never been a very high percentage of voters that also caucus. It’s a bit of a mystery to me that is tells anybody anything.
1:00 pm
The whole thing about having States which together total roughly 5 million decide which candidates will be voted on by the other 300 million is what is crazy. Might as well throw darts at the names to decide who will run in the rest of the country.
We need a better system as this one is getting more broken each 4 year cycle.
6:22 pm
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