Monday, November 19, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Iowa Polling
...is famously inaccurate, as we know. But this latest ABC poll is interesting--in part because of Obama's trajectory, but also because of this:
According to Democratic Party rules, a candidate must draw at least 15 percent at each caucus site for the votes to count; if that fails to happen, their supporters often throw their votes to a more viable contender. Combining the second-choice picks of candidates outside the top three, 34 percent would select Obama, 28 percent Edwards and only 15 percent Clinton.
Nutcase political junkies (like me) will remember that in 2004 John Edwards benefited enormously from being the second choice of Gephardt voters--they turned to Edwards in caucus after caucus where Gephardt didn't reach the magic 15%. This time Richardson is probably the biggest cache of second-choice voters that will be up for grabs, followed by Biden. I'd guess the Richardson vote goes to Obama or, maybe, Edwards. The Biden vote is more likely to go to Clinton.
But these ornate caucus rites are probably what has the Clinton campaign a bit, shall we say, concerned.
About Swampland
Joe Klein is TIME's political columnist and author of six books, most recently Politics Lost. His weekly TIME column, "In the Arena," covers national and international affairs. In 2004 he won the National Headliner Award for best magazine column. Read more
Senior Writer Karen Tumulty has been TIME's National Political Correspondent since 2001, and has also covered the White House and Congress for the magazine. A native of San Antonio, she is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School, where her career choice has significantly lowered the average salary of her graduating class. But she gets lots of free magazines. Read more
Jay Newton-Small Jay Newton-Small covers politics for TIME. She has covered the Bush 43 White House and also Congress from the DeLay era to the present. And, yes, despite the misleading name SHE is a she. Read more
Michael Scherer is a correspondent in TIME's Washington bureau covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked national assignments for Mother Jones magazine and Salon.com. Read more
Amy Sullivan is a senior editor at TIME magazine, and author of the book The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap (Scribner, 2008). A Michigan native, she holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School. She writes about religion and politics for TIME, but no longer answers to the name "Bible Girl." Read more
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