Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 8:53 pm
The Only Polls that Count...
Are on election day, or so I've heard. And the national polls are useless, at this point. And Iowa polls are notoriously unreliable, but this poll of the early states, Iowa and New Hampshire, but especially Iowa, from the relatively reputable CBS-NYTimes numbers crunchers is fascinating on two counts.
The Democratic race is a three-way dead heat in Iowa. We already knew that, but still...a three-way dead heat.
And Mike Huckabee is moving on the Republican side, within six points of Mitt Romney, which is potentially big news because most people had assumed that Romney was a lock, given the bazillions he has spent there.
Now this caveat: Iowans are perverse. They will insist on changing their minds several times, just to keep all of our attention focused on them, between now and the caucusing. It's sort of like roller derby, with lots of elbowing and slipstreaming and then someone or ones break loose from the pack and...crashes into the rail, or occasionally, wins.
In any case, there is no inevitability in Iowa. Time to start paying close attention. I've bought a new winter coat, which includes the better part of a sheep as lining, for the occasion. I"m ready to roll.
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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