The Associated Press and The Pew Research Center (.pdf) today released polling of likely Democratic voters from the early states. The polling isn't terribly new -- the median day the poll was in the field was November 15, which is less recent than four or five of the last polls from Iowa, four or five of the last polls from New Hampshire, and two or three of the last polls from South Carolina -- so it's not clear to me that these numbers do much to refute more recent numbers showing Clinton's lead effectively gone in Iowa and shrinking in New Hampshire. However, these numbers are still worth taking a look at even if they aren't entirely fresh, so here goes (along with the latest Pollster.com averages from these states, which include these Pew numbers).
| IA | NH | SC | ||||
| Candidate | Nov (2nd Choice) | Pollster | Nov | Pollster | Nov | Pollster |
| Clinton | 31 (16) | 28.1 | 38 | 36.5 | 45 | 44.2 |
| Obama | 26 (27) | 26.4 | 19 | 23.2 | 31 | 24.8 |
| Edwards | 19 (22) | 21.2 | 15 | 14.4. | 10 | 10.9 |
| Richardson | 10 (9) | 8.7 | 10 | 8.8 | 1 | 1.1 |
| Biden | 2 (4) | 4.6 | 2 | 2.5 | 2 | 2.0 |
| Dodd | 1 (4) | 1.0 | 1 | 1.3 | 0 | 0.3 |
| Kucinich | 1 (1) | 1.2 | 4 | 3.2 | 1 | 1.0 |
One more general point about these surveys before a bit of analysis about what they mean or might mean. Looking specifically at Iowa, Pew found 460 of the 2,111 registered voters it interviewed to "say they will definitely or probably attend a Democratic caucus." This would seem to correspond to a turnout for the Democratic caucuses of roughly 450,000 voters, which would be more than 3.5 times larger than the estimated turnout in 2004 and somewhere in the range of 2.5-3 times larger than the high end of predicted turnout for the Democratic caucuses next month. In short, one could question whether Pew's likely voter screen here was sufficiently tight.
That said, these polls, along with a soon-to-be-released survey from Iowa State University which also shows Clinton holding a lead in the Hawkeye State (though the poll seems to have a high margin of error at plus or minus 6 percentage points), could at least slow down the meme that Clinton has lost her lead in Iowa to Obama. The big take away from all of these polls (not just these ones but also those released in the not-too-distant-past), however, is that the race for the Democratic nomination is not by any means locked up, and that it should be an interesting couple of months going ahead.
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