IA-2008: Hillary barely leads Obama

Though the national polls show a Hillary landslide in the making, Iowa is still a very close race.  This new University of Iowa poll of 306 likely Democratic caucus-goers finds that Obama still could win the state.  As for Edwards, he is beginning to fall behind, despite the fact that over the weekend he became the first candidate in either party to visit all 99 counties.

Here are the numbers:

Likely Iowa Caucus Voters

Hillary Clinton - 29%
Barack Obama - 27%
John Edwards - 20%
Bill Richardson - 7%
Joe Biden - 5%

/- 5.8%

If Hillary Clinton rolls through Iowa, nothing will stop her from winning the nomination -- mark my words.  With that said, Iowa is still very much up in the air.  Remember, with three weeks to go before the vote in 2004, John Kerry trailed in third place.  But as Kos points out, Clinton is much more disciplined than Howard Dean:

Clinton is no Howard Dean. In fact, she may be the most disciplinedpolitician I have ever seen. She's a machine, always on message,relentlessly perfect on everything -- appearance, message, and policy.It's that discipline that has allowed her to fool people into thinkingshe'd pull all of our troops out of Iraq and that her vote on Iranwasn't REALLY as horrible as it really was.

She won't make a mistake. She will not implode. She's too good tomake the obvious mistake, and even if she erred (she's human, so we canassume), her campaign wouldn't waste any time setting things straight.

It truly comes down to whether voters in Iowa will be fooled by machine-style politics, or whether they look beyond the inevitability factor and select a candidate based on substance.

In tomorrow's debate, Obama and Edwards will need to go on the offensive.  No more playing around.  If they are unable to be more disciplined in their message, we are looking at a Clinton primary landslide.

(We invite all of you to join us for the live chat during tomorrow's MSNBC debate, which begins at 9 PM ET/6 PM PT.)

Comments

[George]

Hey Todd, Looks like thebluestate landed a huge one here! You found Bin Laden!

Anyway, that was a great analysis by Markos. And you are right when you say "fooled".

Chris Matthews gave Obama a great few lines at the top of Hardball tonite. I hope he was listening.

[Chief Editor: Todd]

Yeah, I deleted that bin laden message because it was spam.

Nonetheless, the debate on Tuesday will be huge. Yes, I saw that bit on Hardball today. Let's hope wasn't leaking stuff to the NYT just for the sake of leaking it....but instead will actually follow up on his talk and go after her corruption in the debate on Tuesday evening.