Kari, are these televised anywhere? I heard a rumor that they were on C-Span last year.

We need to be on guard when we read allegations of "push polling." When it is actually a mass voter telephone technique used to convey negative information about a candidate under the guise of a legitimate voter preference poll, it is a disreputable practice.

However, legitimate random-sample voter preference polls by candidates often include so-called "push" questions to determine a candidate or an opponent's strengths and weaknesses. Things like "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Mike Huckabee if you knew he was a Baptist minister before he entered politics?" would, in my opinion, be a legitimate question for either Huckabee or one of his opponents to ask in a normal public opinion poll. So would "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Mitt Romney if you knew he was a Mormon?" or event "Would you vote for Rudy Giuliani if you knew he had been married three times?"

The information obtained from questions like these may be helpful to either campaign, is not misleading or factually incorrect and, in a random sample poll, communicates the message to such a small number of voters as to be ineffective as a smear in any event.

Now even in an otherwise legitimate poll, I believe it is inappropriate to ask questions based on false or baseless accusations, such as the "Would you vote for John McCain if you knew he fathered a black child out of wedlock?" supposedly asked in South Carolina in 2000, or even "Would you vote for Mitt Romney if you knew he believed that Jesus Christ and Satan are brothers?"

The bottom line is, even if Moore Information was involved in this polling, we would need to know a lot more about what was being asked and how the poll was being conducted before determining whether anything inappropriate (much less illegal) was being done in New Hampshire. I certainly do not believe Moore Information would be involved in push polling in the negative sense of that term.

Yeah, C-SPAN will be covering the Dems and C-SPAN2 will be covering the GOP. Also, it seems that the cable news folks will be in wall-to-wall coverage.

Finally, the Progressive Happy Hour crew will be watching results starting at 5:30 at The Venue - the place formerly known as Billy Reed's - on MLK.

Still in flux (i.e. can flip) but looks like Obama is going to win this one, with Edwards and Hillary scraping it up for 2nd/3rd (most likely Clinton nabs 2nd as the rural counties report first which would tend to favor Edwards and why he was ahead in the early reporting, but is now fading).

As of now with 87% of the preciincts reporting, it looks like Edwards is beating Clinton for the 2nd place spot with Obama opening a wider lead now.

So far the only person who might get any delgates at all out of Iowa who isn't named Obama, Edwards or Clinton, is Richardson with enough for 1 delgate out of Iowas 56.

Reuters is saying it was Obama, Edwards and then Clinton, with Huckabee winning on the other side. I predicted both winners on Kari's Punditology thing, but thought Hillary would edge out Edwards rather than the other way around.

The other really interesting stat reported out of Iowa is how many turned out for each Party, looking very much like the national polls at nearly 2.5 at a Dem caucus for every one at a GOPer caucus. Looks like I'm not the only Indie who is only looking at the Dems this election.

greetings and happy dance from Back Stage at Baghdad. as you can imagine, the Obama crowd is pretty damn stoked. it's only Iowa, but it's a great start. there are no guarantees from here, but one thing stood out for me.

CNN had a map of where support for the top 3 Dems lay. Hillary and Edwards had localized support, she in the west and he in the south. then they showed Obama: his support was across the state. this is exactly what his campaign has claimed: that he can garner across-the-board support no other candidate can. and at least in Iowa, that was true.

Edwards' speech was excellent; Hillary did her best to spin the disaster. Obama was in a different league. if he repeats this in New Hampshire, it could swing the entire country. but we have a long way to go, a lot of work to do.

Posted by: liberalincarnate | Jan 3, 2008 8:19:55 PM I will accept my Iowa prediction prize now. ;)

I hope they are handing out more than one since I called it with ya, and we did it a day before the voting began.

<h2>I would have to dig, but also called Huckabee would finally catch traction on the GOP side some 5 months ago.</h2>