Democratic Caucuses Will Be Held Jan 3

The Politico and Marc Ambinder are both reporting that the Democratic Iowa Caucuses will be held on Thursday, January 3, 2008. That’s the same date as the Republican Caucuses, and it is the earliest Caucus date in history. The implications of this date have been thoroughly analyzed during the past two months of speculation, but here is a brief summary:

• No colleges or universities will be back from Winter Break by this date. Conventional wisdom is that this will make Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign to organize students difficult, but the payoffs of a good student organization will be larger if students are spread out across multiple cities rather than concentrated in a few big precincts.
• This is only three days into the New Year. Some Iowans will be out of town for the week, and many others will be just returning to town.
• This date is less than two weeks after Christmas. The final two weeks of the Caucus season are often filled with wall-to-wall television ads, some of which are negative. How Iowans will react to attack ads on Christmas is unknown. Candidates also typically leave a few days around the holidays to stop bothering Caucus-goers with phone calls and public appearances, but that may not be possible with this schedule.
• Moving up the Caucus date may benefit Sen. John Edwards, who will not have to stretch his money in Iowa for an additional two weeks.

And one additional note: although the Democratic State Central Committee is likely to accept the party leadership’s recommendation of a January 3 date, it is still not 100% certain. There is a chance that some prominent, vocal opponents of a January 3 date will emerge, and no one is sure what New Hampshire will do, too. Still, that the Iowa Democratic Party is publicly confirming their recommendation means that the January 3 date is likely to stick.

Update (4:22PM): I have begun to collect responses from Iowa presidential campaigns here.