Illinois Senator Barack Obama and ex-Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards lead the field for the all-important support of Democratic Iowa caucus voters, according to a new poll by KCCI-TV released earlier this week (the poll has a margin of error of +/- 5.0 points).

Edwards, who has campaigned continuously in Iowa during the past few years, could only eke out a tie at 22% with the junior senator from Illinois. The momentum demonstrated by Obama’s unofficial campaign, is perhaps the bigger story coming out of this poll than Hillary Clinton’s disappointing 10%. Tim Vilsack (12%) came in third place, and is the only candidate in the field who has announced his candidacy other than Dennis Kucinich (4%).

Poll-watchers no doubt are intrigued by these results, but consider the 2004 Election to see just how much things can change in campaigns as well as the minds of Iowa voters in just a year. In one of the first polls conducted by KCCI-TV for that election (March 2003), Richard Gephardt led the field with 22%, only to receive half that support (11%) and land in fourth place on the day of the caucus some ten months later.

On the other side, Howard Dean polled at just 6% back in March 2003—good for only 5th place, and well behind Joe Lieberman (16%), who didn’t even campaign in Iowa. On Caucus Day in 2004, Dean had amassed 18% of the Democratic vote (and had been polling even higher until a poor last week of the Iowa campaign), and Lieberman received 0%.

Edwards quadrupled his support from 2003 to 2004, from 8% in the early poll to a very strong 32% in the January Caucus. The fresh-faced Edwards, who was a media darling in 2004, is no doubt fearing that Obama, several years his junior, is the new Edwards.

5 Comments

  1. Preston W White on April 8, 2007 at 4:29 am

    The headlines say it all. I think that the Democratic ticket in 2008 should be Edwards – Obama

    Talk about a hot ticket. This one would be unbeatable. Edwards has the background – Obama appeals to the lower generation and to minorities. That leaves the women to Hillary and yet I have met too many women who will not vote for her. They are tired of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton power change. Things in DC need to evolve and with Hillary there is no evolution, just the same-old…

  2. Preston W White on April 13, 2007 at 4:59 am

    Just to let everyone know we will have our polling system ready in about a week at: http://www.adison.edu/political-polls.htm – this is where .edu sites and .gov sites will be able to build their own poll and put it on their own site. Also at adison we have just started http://www.getoutthevote.net and encourage everyone to get involved and informed about the continuing voting crisis…

  3. Pregnancy on May 13, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    Preston thanks for links, looks like it is all panning out !

  4. discount hammocks on October 10, 2008 at 1:00 am

    Nice prediction son!!

Leave a Comment