I ignore any result that requires a radical change in voter behavior or a turn out that is beyond anything that's normal for american politics.

Well, there's nothing people not in Iowa can do now, maybe best to settle in and think about other things until Friday.

Petey's Iowa Prediction:

38% Edwards
32% Clinton
26% Obama

I love Selzer, but I think she's got this one wrong.

Kucinich is urging his supporters to support Obama where he's not viable, which will be most places. Apparently Biden may be working out a similar arrangement.

"which will be most places."

Most places? Kucinich didn't run in Iowa this time. He doesn't even have support in Fairfield this time around.

I'd be astonished to see Biden making a deal, since it'd hurt his chances of beating Richardson for 4th.

As to Richardson, who knows what Mark Penn has up his sleeve.

-----

Kucninch has been visibly pissed at Edwards since the open mic caught the "smaller debates" comment.

there goes the alien abductees vote

"So there you are. The magic of statistical sampling conclusively demonstrates that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards are all poised to blow away Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards in the Iowa Caucus. It's not even going to be close."

I love it! :-)

Petey, by most places I meant most places where he has supporters, ie he won't make 15% anywhere, so he's pretty much telling all his supporters to vote for Obama.

Well the CNN poll is from a company owned by Clinton-supporter Vinod Gupta (he named a school after her). I'm just sayin'.

Sorry, but I was visualizing Ezra at a stuffy dinner party in one of those high-collared shirts and waistcoats that men wear in movies set in the Victorian era. Ezra Klein, universal health care guru, now starring as Mr. Rochester in the latest Merchant-Ivory production of Jane Eyre.

Darn. Edwards loses whatever portion of Dennis Kucinich's 1% that actually listens to the damned egomaniac. Edwards is running to change things. Kucinich is running to get credit for trying to change things.

As for biden's deal, those are natural Clinton supporters. Any deal that means Clinton will have less support than she would otherwise have is a good one as far as I'm concerned.

At the end of the day, this all comes down to whether or not Selzer's wacky model is correct. If so, it's an Obama Thursday.

If not, I think Edwards takes this easily, with Obama likely in third.

I think Selzer is wrong, but she's a smart cookie, and might be right.

This is why Thursday will be fun.

Most of these polls are laughable to the point of ridiculousness. Does anyone really think that the Democratic Caucus will have 200k attendees? 40% of the field independents? More than 1/2 of the caucus being made up of new attendees?

While not technically impossible, none of these things has happened before and every campaign that has ever banked on an swarm of new voters for success has failed. Actually voting in a caucus like this is a hell of a lot different from actually doing so.

err, stating that you will do so.

Put me in the "I have no freakin' clue" camp. I think I'd have just as much luck picking the winner with random numbers as by trying to suss it out.

The weather forecast for Des Moines for Thursday is partly cloudy, no precipitation, high 28, low 18. Nothing that would keep anyone away from the caucuses.

Clinton will win. The Clintons and their machine will not allow it to be otherwise.

Machines can't really rig a caucus without it being extremely obvious. They would basically need to show up with guns and try to force people to side with her. I would suggest that would be a bad idea in a state like Iowa.

The only thing I disagree with in this post is Ezra's claim that he has an unpleasant disposition.

Nobody can be sure what's going to happen. If I had to guess, I'd swap the Obama-Clinton numbers from Petey. (Selzer can be a third right.) But who the hell knows?

Seriously thinking about heading up to NH if Edwards takes Iowa. Don't know what I'll do.

Petey:
Do you really think that 50% of the caucus goers will be first time registered Dems? That's what the DMR poll is basically saying. I don't buy that for a second since the record is about 20%.

My Prediction:
1)It will be very close.
2)All will spin it as a Victory for their camp.
3)It won't tell us a damn thing about who will be the nominee.

Petey, there's one problem with your theory about Selzer getting it wrong:

By her own cross-tab numbers, even if the voter-breakdown is identical in 2008 to that of 2004, Obama and Clinton are in a statistical tie, at 31-29.

It just doesn't work out.

See: David Yepsen

Will some of these fair-weather Democrats not bother to show up? If they don't, it will change the outcome. If pollsters adjust the party identifications in 2008 to look like they did in 2004, Clinton could beat Obama 31 percent to 29 percent.

That's stat. insignificant, of course. Note that Edwards still comes in 3rd

You need to go do the leg work necessary to make your prediction. it seems like you're just pulling numbers out of thin air. Nothing in the Selzer poll, even ignoring her likely voter breakdown, backs your prediction

Also, Joe Klein's Conscience:

In 2004, 45% of Iowa caucus-goers were 1st timers. More playing loose with the facts.

If you're going to be skeptical or contrarian, why not ground that in reality?

link of Iowa caucus breakdown from 2004

since we're talking about reality, lets bring up some facts.

1.) Obama is reliant on Independant voters for a win in Iowa.

2.) In 2004, Independents only made up 19% of the vote.

3.)the last DMR poll indicates that Independents will make up 40% of the vote.

Those are all facts. You can decide for yourself if that is realistic.

"You need to go do the leg work necessary to make your prediction. it seems like you're just pulling numbers out of thin air. Nothing in the Selzer poll, even ignoring her likely voter breakdown, backs your prediction"

For one, Selzer's numbers ignore what happens after her poll is taken.

Edwards picks up 3 points during the scope of the DMR poll. Over a quarter of caucus-goers can be expected to decide Sun through Thurs. If we think Selzer is capturing movement towards Edwards during the poll, we can expect that movement to continue during the crucial late-decider phase.

Add to that the second choice vote, where Edwards is expected to pick up between 35% to 65%, which Selzer isn't computing.

In short, if Selzer's New Independent Army doesn't materialize, I think we can expect Edwards to win by somewhere around double digits.

If Selzer is correct about who's going to show up, then things will be different. But although I don't dismiss her prediction out of hand - as stated, she's a smart cookie - I think she's likely wrong here.

"If I had to guess, I'd swap the Obama-Clinton numbers from Petey. (Selzer can be a third right.)"

You might actually be right about this.

In fact, one of the clearest things you can see about Iowa is that Clinton has been hemorrhaging support over the past few days in pretty much every poll with a tracking component.

I'd been assuming that she had a firm enough floor to stay around 30%, but maybe that's not the case. And her support is headed to Edwards, not Obama. (Bonoir was even saying she might not hit viability in some rural precincts up North.)

If she falls to 26% or lower on Thursday, I think Edwards is a lock, no matter what the turnout mix ends up looking like.

-----

It's funny. All throughout 2007, the CW has been this was a Clinton vs. Anti-Clinton race, with Edwards and Obama in danger of splitting the majority anti-Clinton vote.

I've always thought this has been a Democrat vs Independent race, with Edwards and Clinton in danger of splitting the majority Democrat vote.

If my template is correct, the Clinton collapse we're witnessing is the best news we could get.

One interesting possibility about Selzer's New Independent Army:

In a certain sense, it's been created by the Romney/Huckabee race not leaving the indies anyplace to go.

So, if the hints of a McCain Iowa resurgence are true, the indies might have someplace to go other than Obama after all.

Wow. Clinton down 2 more points over the last 24 hours in this morning's Zogby tracker.

Neil is right. Senator Clinton is coming in third. What's her floor? She could maybe end up as low as 20%?

It'll be interesting to see what (if anything) Team Clinton does with the Richardson trojan horse.

The thing is, the two pieces of information we need the most is which campaigns are going to hit their targets in bringing out their supporters, and what is the geographic distribution of the candidate's support.

And since we can't know the first without running the caucus, its not worth any pollster's while to take the massive sample necessary to get a handle on the second ... so to find out the second, we have to run the caucus itself.

This reminds me of the Singapore model of pegging exchange rates ... they put a basket of currencies together, most of which float against each other, they move their peg against the basket in a large number of small increments, and they change the composition of the basket in large numbers of small increments.

The combination of the three means that it is basically impossible to work out what their peg is at any point in time, and so its impossible for speculators to destroy the peg by betting against it when it is leaning against the wind.

The Iowa caucuses are like that ... they ensure that people have to pay attention to the results of the caucus by defying anything even close to prediction by the best pollsters in the business.

Here's what will happen, I think:*

Either Edwards or Obama will win with about 34%. Clinton will take second (prob. with about 28%), but will be so tightly bunched with the member of the Edwards/Obama duo that doesn't win (within 1.5%) that it won't so much matter. Biden will surprise folks and take fourth at about 8%, Richardson will clock in at 4%, and Dodd will take 3%. Kucinich will take maybe 1%, having thrown all his non-viable support to Obama.

*Note: Everything in this post, especially the numbers, are semi-educated guesses.

I've been thinking along Petey lines:

"I've always thought this has been a Democrat vs Independent race, with Edwards and Clinton in danger of splitting the majority Democrat vote.

If my template is correct, the Clinton collapse we're witnessing is the best news we could get." - Posted by: Petey-January 2, 2008.

But....but...Hillary has enough money to make to the convention, there she would be able to use her ruthless Machiavellian machinations to full effect...she would rather take down the 2008 election before she would concede. If you think Hillary will cede honorably after all the public humiliation she has endured to get where she is today...you are kidding yourself.

Hill's an old fashion woman, she picked a man who she thought would bring her to power, she was right, and now is payback. Hillary feels she has a right to the presidency after what she put up with...within some circles this is a good argument. Which brings up....

WARNING: Hillary might have gotten to power as Eva Peron did, but she did so from an elevated place in society, it's pretty doubtful she owes any loyalty to the peasants...and that's where she is running strongest...the low information voter.

I really don't think theres the stomach among the actual voters for a long protracted fight. The candidates may still have plenty of money, but that won't matter if everyone simply unites around whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire. For a great many reasons, I think the era of the long nomination battle is over. Political machines aren't what they used to be. We live in a much faster paced culture than we did in the 80's and before. Also, most people just want to win and they don't want a bitter nomination battle.

Like I said, I think the candidates will keep trying but I don't think it's going to matter much if someone wins both IA and NH. I expect that someone will.

I'm not going to even guess who that someone is, though. The rest of you can make predictions, but guessing on the IA caucus is voodoo as far as I'm concerned. There are just too many unknowns. I hope it's Edwards, but I haven't got a clue.

I really don't think theres the stomach among the actual voters for a long protracted fight.

soullite: I think you're very likely correct here, and at the very least, the system doesn't seem to be conducive to long nomination fights. Still, I have less stomach for another Republican administration than I do a long nomination fight. My worry about the front loaded system we currently have in place is that lemons aren't discovered to be lemons until it's too late. I think Kerry's basically a very good man and a terrific senator, but I think it's undeniable he turned out to be a poor general election candidate. I don't know what the solution is. Perhaps one doesn't exist. The only think I can think of is to have a lot more time between Iowa/NH and the third contest.

After the results from yesterday, there may be a few more surprises to come.
Obama or Edwards??