More Iowa Polls

Mason-Dixon, in association with McClatchy and MSNBC, came out with a new poll Sunday. The results are below with trend-lines going back to 3 weeks ago.

Edwards 24% (+3)
Clinton 23% (-4)
Obama 22% (-3)
Richardson 12% (+3)
Biden 8% (+3)

Romney 27% (+7)
Huckabee 23% (-9)
Thompson 14% (+3)
McCain 13% (+6)
Giuliani 5% (--)
Paul 5% (+3)

American Research Group also dropped some knowledge on us Sunday. Here, the trend-lines date back only 5 days to their last pre-Christmas poll.

Clinton 31% (-3)
Edwards 24% (-1)
Obama 24% (+2)
Biden 5% (-3)
Richardson 5% (--)

Romney 32% (+11)
Huckabee 23% (--)
McCain 11% (-6)
Thompson 7% (+4)
Giuliani 6% (-8)
Paul 6% (-4)

The biggest polling news of the day was the announcement that *FINALLY* someone has started a daily tracking poll on the early states. The pollster will be Zogby, in association with Reuters and C-SPAN, and they'll publish daily results in both Iowa and New Hampshire until each race is over. They dropped the first results yesterday. Trend-lines date back a month.

Clinton 31% (+4)
Obama 27% (+3)
Edwards 24% (+3)
Richardson 5% (-3)
Biden 5% (--)

Huckabee 29% (+4)
Romney 28% (+3)
McCain 11% (+6)
Thompson 8% (--)
Giuliani 8% (-4)
Paul 8% (+3)

Analysis:

The variation in the Democratic polls has got to be a result of differing voter screens. If you're interested in the various voter screens, Pollster.com has a good article here. For example, I can guarantee that Mason-Dixon bases their likely caucus-goer universe more heavily on previous caucus-goers, among whom Edwards does especially well.

Romney has surged back at the same time that Huckabee settled back down to earth. I'm not sure if I buy that Romney is as far ahead as ARG tells us. Instead, I attribute much of that lead to the press bashing Huckabee received about a couple of minor foreign policy-related misstatements. That whole saga is hilarious. The media, over-correcting for its long-time adoration of Huckabee, decided to hit him over the head with a couple of misstatements, turning them from minor (and mostly understandable) mistakes into signs that Huckabee is completely incompetent. Now, they are berating themselves once again for their overreaction. I expect that they'll ease up on him in these last few days.