Weekend Roundup

Chris Bowers at OpenLeft posted a “Nomination at a Glance” update, with this to say about Iowa:

After months of trying to force a two-person race, the established media is closer than ever to actually achieving one. While Edwards is still clearly in the game in Iowa, he has now fallen to third behind Obama. Given that Obama is also the leading second choice among Iowans according to both Newsweek and LA Times / Bloomberg, right now Iowa looks like a virtual tie between Obama and Clinton, with Edwards slightly behind. This change of events is largely based on the difference in paid media in the state, as Clinton, Obama, Richardson, Biden and Dodd have combined for nearly $7M, and Edwards has only chipped in $23,000. Accepting public funds won’t help that situation, either. Edwards is going to have to win Iowa on the ground.

Outside of Iowa, Clinton’s lead is pretty large. Whether or not it will hold if she loses Iowa is the obvious question facing the campaign.

Matthew Yglasias brings up the question of tactical voting in the caucuses, something the national folks might underestimate.

There was some direct reaction to the Newsweek poll putting Clinton in the lead in Iowa among all Democrats but putting Obama in the lead among likely caucus goers. Jonathan Singer notes:

A few things to note about this poll other than the fact that this is the first time that Newsweek has polled this race. First, the numbers quoted above include leaners. Second, the number of likely Democratic caucusgoers polled is not listed as best I can tell, but from an estimate based on the reported margin of error of plus or minus 7 percentage points for likely Democratic caucus-goers I’d imagine these numbers reflect about 200 respondents, which would yield a bit over 300,000 Democratic caucus participants — a significantly larger number than the roughly 122,000 Democratic pcaucus participants in 2004. Finally, I’d note one more time that the margin of error of plus or minus 7 percentage points is quite high as far as these things come.

On the OpenLeft front page, brklyngrl observes:

Obama and Richardson both do better among likely caucus goers than registered Democrats, while Clinton does worse and Edwards does basically the same. Still, Clinton has the highest fraction of supporters who say they are strongly supporting her - 55%, compared to 41% for Obama and 37% for Edwards. Another interesting result from this poll - 80% of those surveyed thought it would be a plus to have Bill Clinton “back in the White House.”

And a new ARG poll of Iowa came out Sunday. If you expected it to be different from any other ARG poll, you were wrong: Clinton’s support seems over-represented, and Edwards’s seems under-represented.