by WonkoKevin

There is almost universal agreement that the opinions that matter most right now are the opinions out of Iowa.  A Clinton win, especially a big one, might close the whole deal then and there.  A Clinton third place finish would really create openings for Obama and Edwards, and a surprise third place (or very close fourth place) finish for Richardson, Dodd, or Biden legitimizes them.  We expect Romney to win, but the bigger question is: who will come in second and how close will they be?

I am going to be discussing opinion out of Iowa for the next 2 months.  Today, let’s look at two blogs: Iowa Democratic Party chairman Gordon Fischer’s blog, Iowa True Blue, and GOP Polk County Chairman Ted Sporer’s blog, The Real Sporer.

Fischer likes all the Dems: “Joe Biden really does know an incredible amount about foreign policy. Hillary Clinton, without any doubt, is absolutely brilliant. Chris Dodd is even more nice, polite, kind, and avuncular then he seems. John Edwards is truly passionate about helping the poor. Bill Richardson is really completely-comfortable-with-himself, has a great sense of humor, and always put everyone at ease. And, of course, Barack Obama is just wonderful.”

A close read though of his blog posts indicates a definite affinity to Barack Obama.

On the other side, Sporer reports that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are doing well in Iowa:

The Rasmussen Report is among the most reliable of polling providers. A Rasmussen poll from earlier in the month ( 10/10-10/14) showed Mitt outside the margin of error at 25, FDT at 19, Huck in a statistical near tie at 18, with Rudy at 13 percent of likely caucus goers. John McCain trailed badly at six percent and no one else had more than 3 percent less than eighty days out.

ARG, another very reliable polling service surveyed Iowa last weekend (10/26-10/29) and found similar results for Mitt (27%), Huck (19%), Rudy (16%), McCain (14%), with FDT trailing (8%). No other remaining candidate has more than 2%, now only 65 days from the Caucuses.

Huckabee had a great October in Iowa. The “word on the street” shows a definite trend toward Little Rock in Iowa. TRS and its many Real Correspondents around the state have almost all observed a substantial increase in coversation about The trend line is currently quite positive. However, ARG, Rasmussen and almost every other October poll show Mitt’s lead to both real and resilient. With the imminence of January 3 it looks increasingly like Mitt is going to come in somewhere between 25 and thirty percent.

A review of October also shows that FDT, Rudy and John McCain are fighting over a relatively fluid group of voters on an almost monthly basis. A small shift among the remaining soft commits and openly undecided voters could have an earth shattering impact on January 3. We aren’t that far from four finishing with the margin of error of each other.

Whew………..

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 11:53 am and is filed under Romney, Horse race, Huckabee, Politics 2.0, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.