New Iowa Poll: Edwards leads, viewed as most electable
Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 01:27:41 PM PDT
John Edwards leads among likely Iowa caucus-goers, according to the latest poll by the University of Iowa released today, with a 5.7% lead over Hillary Clinton and a 14.9% lead over Barack Obama.
Results show that Edwards remains the leader among likely Democratic caucus goers, competing primarily with Clinton for caucus support. Edwards led by a substantial margin with 34.2 percent. Clinton followed with 28.5 percent, and Obama with 19.3 percent. No other candidate reached 2 percent. Twelve and a half percent of Democratic caucus goers were undecided.
Edwards also is viewed as the most electable of the Democrats.
Edwards' support among Democratic caucus goers appears to be linked to perceptions that he can win the presidential election. When given the statement "Edwards is electable", 89.0 percent of Democratic caucus goers agreed. This was the highest percentage in the survey. 86.6 percent of Democratic caucus goers believe Obama is electable; 76.5 percent feel Clinton is.
Analysis after the jump.
Edwards holds the trump cards in Iowa, both in terms of actual support and potential gains. He already leads among likely caucus-goers, and more of them believe he is electable than they do either of the other top two candidates. He is well-positioned to claim the media's mantle of "winner" at the very start of the race and receive the free coverage that entails.
Clinton comes substantially closer to Edwards in actual support, but she is viewed as significantly less electable, limiting her potential to build on those numbers. With Tom Vilsack's endorsement and claim that he will help her "win" in Iowa, not just "do well" in Iowa (wording that was no doubt cleared by the Clinton campaign) she now faces an expectations hurdle that will be very difficult for her to clear.
Obama is viewed as almost as electable as Edwards, but trails by a wide margin in actual support. His potential for gain is greater than Clinton's, but he has a large gap to close. Coming from neighboring Illinois, he has the added expectation of doing well in his home region, but a third-place finish in this race would be hard to recover from.
As I mentioned in an Early Bird Analysis last November, Edwards' advantage in broad support across the state should improve his showing on caucus night. Clinton, in particular, is likely to struggle to meet the viability threshhold in some rural precincts -- the places where she is least likely to be viewed as electable -- and therefore underperform.
This would lead to the results I predicted at that time (although Russ Feingold later opted not to run, and Dennis Kucinich decided to get in). I think ultimately this is a race for second place, and third place is going to look a lot like last place.
