These are really two different topics so I'm splitting this post in half -- J

Via Political Wire, Republican pollster Strategic Vision has just posted its latest polling of likely Iowa Democratic and Republican caucus-goers. Before I get to the horse race numbers, I want to pass on some even more interesting data points.

Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months?

	Republicans	Democrats
Yes	56 percent	83 percent
No	38 percent	6 percent
Undecided	6 percent	11 percent

As I noted last month, when Strategic Vision showed similar results among likely Iowa caucus-goers (Republicans split 54/37 in favor of complete withdrawal within six months), "Certainly there's an extent to which these results are reflective of the fact that Strategic Vision did not give respondents a chance to choose other alternatives, like withdrawing some troops over this time period or aiming to withdraw all American forces in six months or a year or two years. Still, the results are fairly clear: A fairly substantial majority of likely Iowa [Republican] caucus-goers favor the full withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq within the next six months. This majority is safe from the margin of error and, to repeat, these numbers come from a Republican poll" [emphasis original].

Just to add one more thing. You can always disregard a single poll as potentially being an outlier. But when the same poll with (assumingly) the same methodology yields almost identical results one month to the next, one needs to at least consider the possibility (quite strongly, in fact) that the poll is not necessarily an outlier, and is (quite possibly) reflective of the views of the population being polled.