skippy the bush kangaroo: frontrunners: iowa? contenders: io-wait a minute!

Saturday, December 08, 2007

frontrunners: iowa? contenders: io-wait a minute!

greg sargent over at tpm sez the edwards campaign has an internal poll showing that candidate in a statistical deadheat w/the dem front-runners:

the memo claims that the poll was completed wednesday night, finding that hillary has 27% of likely caucus goers, edwards has 24%, and obama has 22%. "support for the top three candidates is so close that it is impossible to distinguish among them with the commonly accepted level of statistical confidence," the memo says.

make of this what you will. you can read a pdf of the full polling memo right here in our tpm document collection, and the full text of it is after the jump.

late update: one of the problems with reading too much into a single internal poll, obviously, is that you don't know what all the campaign's other internal polls show.

point taken, greg. but on the other side of the political aisle, newsweek find that iowa hearts huckabee:

the most dramatic result to come out of the poll, which is based on telephone interviews with 1,408 registered iowa voters on dec. 5 and 6, is huckabee's emergence from the shadows of the gop race into the front runner's spot in just two months. the ordained southern baptist minister now leads romney by a two-to-one margin, 39 percent to 17 percent, among likely gop caucus-goers. in the last newsweek survey, conducted sept. 26-27, huckabee polled a mere 6 percent to romney's 25 percent, which then led the field.

huckabee has also opened up a wide margin over the next three leading candidates, who all show signs of fading in iowa: rudy giuliani, who dropped from 15 percent in the last survey to 9 percent in the current one; fred thompson, who fell from 16 percent to 10 percent; and john mccain, who slipped from 7 percent to 6 percent. "you rarely see anything like [huckabee's surge]," says larry hugick, who directed the polling for princeton survey research associates. hugick added that the reason has as much to do with a leeriness of the other candidates among republican voters as huckabee's folksy success on the stump. "he's filling a vacuum," hugick said. "nobody on the republican side was getting strong support."

keep in mind that newsweek finds john edwards placing far behind obama (win) and clinton (show).

not that we mean anything by the use of the horserace metaphor.

meanwhile, lew rockwell is all up in arms getting the vapors over the fact that newsweek failed to report ron paul's phenomenal gains over john mccain. yes, you heard us right:

the new msnbc/newsweek poll on iowa puts ron paul at 8% of likely gop caucus-goers, 2 points above mccain…

newsweek's article on the poll analyzes it with regard to the top candidates, including mccain, but omits any mention of ron paul, who beats mccain in their own numbers…

huckabee: 39%
romney: 17%
thompson: 10%
giuliani: 9%
mccain: 6%

and then proceeded to talk about those five candidates, never mentioning ron paul's 8%.

it's the liberal corporate media government establishment conspiracy at work! deliberately not mentioning the guy in fifth place. that's right, apparently the evil powers-that-be don't want the grass roots to know just how really lame ron paul is.

pardon our snark, but if ron paul is this year's howard dean, why isn't he in first place like the good doctor was this time four years ago? just askin'...

Labels: clinton, edwards, huckabee, obama, prez campaign, primaries