ARG poll a Boxing Day bombshell
by WonkoKevin
Two new polls from American Research Group are dominating people’s attention as we are now less than a week away from the Iowa caucuses. According to the ARG poll, Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead over John Edwards 34 to 20 percent, with Barack Obama in third at 19% and Joe Biden at 8%. In the Republican race, Mike Huckabee maintained a slim but diminishing lead over Mitt Romney 23 to 21 percent, with a surging John McCain at 17%, Rudy Giuliani at a surprising 14%, and Ron Paul at 10%, ahead of Fred Thompson.The numbers represent a widening margin for Clinton and a tightening margin for Huckabee compared to a similar ARG poll one week ago. The liberal Wonkosphere is crying foul from both sides–those who are pointing out that these results are out of whack with trend lines from previous polls, and those complaining that mass media is ignoring this poll because of anti-Hillary bias. Looking at previous polls, I am tempted to believe the former. For whatever reason, these numbers seem extreme. Either Clinton really has made a dramatic leap forward, or something was odd about their sampling procedure. I see nothing in the Wonkosphere buzz that indicates such a sudden turn-off with Obama.
On the Republican side, the results are not that far off from other Iowa polls, with the exception that Ron Paul is a lot higher, and Fred Thompson is a lot lower. This jives with my sense of what is happening, which gives me more confidence in the poll, so maybe the Clinton breakout is real… Another poll, from AP and Yahoo!News indicates just how much of a toss-up Iowa could be: 2 in 5 likely Republican voters have changed their preference in the last month, and two-thirds say they may do so again in the next week.
