I think we all understood that this double digit lead is nearly impossible for any candidate on the Democratic side.

You must be naive to believe in the last ARG poll, politico.com reports that reporters in IA are suspicious of the last ARG poll, they believed that it was skewed due to numerous reasons. Check out at drudge web, he called it "shock poll." Sorry for using drudge, I don't like him either but it is worthy noticing that many people, besides Hillary supporters, had doubt about this poll.

I kind of thought the Obama number looked a little low and Clinton was probably a tad high in this one. ARG had done another poll just a few days previously that had Obama in second place and Clinton in the lead by a much smaller margin.

However this is when you would expect to start seeing the effect of personal contacts from field operations getting out there turning trying to harden their "twos" into "ones." So we could be picking up some of that. Edwards and Obama have also started kind of going after each other in the last week or so, and the colleges were probably on holiday break when the second one was done.

Anyway, I'll be very surprised if we don't see at least a couple more polls in the next week. And of course in 8 more days we can stop guessing.

One thing for sure that HRC has managed to stop the bleeding in last couple of weeks. It looked really bad for HRC early Dec. I thought after Oprah week and many snafus that HRC campaign made, Obama might sweep Iowa. Somehow may be Bill Clinton effect, Michael Wholey's startegies or softening of her image the race is still very tight. You cannot rule out anybody. It will be really bad for Obama if Obama comes in 3rd as the main stream media has raised expectation for him to win Iowa. Key for him is turnout of voters between 18-34. Obama has potential to win big or lose big.

Pandora - I agree with you. Clinton has stopped the bleeding (I think the DMR endorsement helped quite a bit - psychologically for her team, if nothing else), and Obama could come in a high first or a distant third. It's impossible to tell which at this point. Perhaps it's because I'm a supporter, but my nerves tell me either scenario is "highly likely."

Yes it was skewed.
It included more 1st-time caucus goers, which was of course designed to hurt Edwards who is strong among former caucus goers.

Anyone who tells you Edwards won't win doesn't know what they're talking about. All the experts like Yepsen and Halperin know Edwards will win.

Oh, BTW Pandora, Michael Whouley apparently isn't in Iowa as it turns out. But Teresa Vilmain is, and she's supposed to be among the people who are in a class as Whouley. I still have my suspicions that the helicopter may still have been Whouley's idea though. That seems to be one of his favorite stunts.

dcshungu wrote: She is now positioned to do very well in IA, because of the overall positive turn of events for her and not because of this […] ARG poll.

I already knew holiday polling was considered unreliable by the professionals, but it was indeed quite useful to get the details from Blumenthal insofar as they helped explain why Clinton's numbers in particular would benefit and Obama's numbers in particular would be harmed.

By the way, pollster also has a great analysis of the trends in Iowa based on varying the sensitivity in their regressions and noting the general problem with different baskets of polls coming in at different times. The bottomline is that the Clinton supporters above may be right insofar as Clinton may have reversed her downward trend, but it could also be the case that what they are seeing is an artifact of random noise and methodological variance.

And the bottomline is we probably won't know which theory is right until after the caucuses, thanks in part to the holiday effect, and in part to the general closeness of the race.

Mark Penn, Hillary strategist, union buster and Blackwater consultant when had his friends at ARG releasing their outlier poll on Christmas eve reminds me of this guy in GA who went to deposit a 1million dollar bill at his local bank thinking that people were stupid enough to realize that it was fake. Spin all you can about polls, outcome in IA will depend on turnout, organization and numerous other variables. As a pragmatist, I will say let's just wait and see. Anyone remember where Kerry was at this day in the last election?

DemAC and dcshungu are Clinton attack dogs.

NOTHING they say has an ounce of credibility with anyone except Hillary's spin machine.

They could save much time and space by simply saying "See our previous posts" and "ditto".

Thanks to TPM for posting the link to Charles Franklin's analysis of the ARG polls. http://www.pollster.com/blogs/pollster_variation_in_iowa.php

Bottom line, ARG polling overestimates Clinton's support and underestimates Obama's.

Election Central. Some posters claim an ARG connection to Marc Penn? Is this true? Please post a fair response.

If there is question about the crediblity of ARG, why does EC present it without qualification? Evidently, because it's purpose is to give Hillary a boost.