The Washington Post has an event tracker for the candidates, looking at where they've been, which gives you a strategic view into where they are placing their bets. Here's a look at the first four states, and the events by the Democratic candidates to each (I'll also mention their days in the state), during 2007 thus far:

                Iowa     Nevada    New Hampshire    South Carolina


Obama           13        2         11               6
Edwards         15        5         17               13
Clinton         18        4         17               11
Richardson       9       14         20                8
Dodd            17        7         27               11
Biden           15        4         10                7
Kucinich         4        4         17                2
Gravel           0        3          4                1

Iowa: Obama's big state is here, 10 days to date, and his visits have been very diverse geographically. He's trying to stake out a bit of ground in eastern part of the state to date, but his pattern looks like a systematic blanket of the whole state, rather than concentrating on one area, at least to date. Richardson is definitely going for the eastern part of Iowa, but he's only been in Iowa three days, he's not playing here to win, but probably to beat expectations. Edwards is sticking to the big democratic population near Des Moines to date, 8 days in Iowa to date. Clinton has more coverage in the eastern and southern parts of the states, where your more traditional liberal democrats live, 8 days to date in Iowa. Biden is starting to camp out in Iowa, 9 days and the most events of any state for him, with an emphasis on Des Moines area. Dodd focus is the opposite of Richardson's with a big emphasis on his visits to the mid-eastern part of the state.

Nevada: The pattern for most of the candidates is to have went to Las Vegas and Reno. That's Biden, Dodd, Edwards, Clinton, Dodd, even Kucinich. But not Obama, where he's only done one visit to the state. Richardson though, is banking on Nevada. 7 days in the state thus far, and twice as many events as anyone else. Clinton has actually raised over $300K in the state, far more than anyone else. Aside from the debate held here, there's just not been a lot of action to date by anyone other than Richardson.

New Hampshire: I was surprised by how often Richardson is visiting here, with 6 days in the state, and the second highest total of events. Dodd is trying to find a few toeholds in Iowa, but he's banking on breaking out in New Hampshire, with 14 days in the state, by far the most. Clinton's in the Portsmouth seaboard area with emphasis, Biden's focus is in the Manchester-Concord area, and Obama's strategy in NH seems to be similar to what he's doing in Iowa, scattering his visits across the state, rather than in any one area. The Edwards strategy is interesting in NH, as he really didn't turn his engines on in the state until April (visiting just once in the first three months), but has visited the state 6 times in the past 8 weeks, so you get the sense that his camp believes they have more traction in the state this time than four years ago. Kucinich shows up in New Hampshire a lot. Overall, it's New Hamphshire that is getting the most visits of any state, which is telling, in that the strategy is to expect that NH leap-frogs into becoming the first contest for the nomination.

South Carolina: Also a debate location, so most candidates worked in events around that event. Biden spent 4 days straight in the state in April around the debate, besting everyone. Richardson camped out for 2 days after the debate, all in Columbia. The others, Clinton, Edwards, Dodd, Obama, Kucinich all stayed for one full day of campaigning after the debate. Edwards and Clinton are spending the most time of any of the candidates in the Charleston area of the state.

So, that's a look at a glance, at all the hours of staff and scheduling and strategy time that's went into the candidates visits to the 4 states thus far. It's amazing to me, having access to all of this information while not having thought about it at all for the past four months. In a previous cycle, it would have been something that campaigns would definitely not have shared openly, and competing campaigns would invest resources into tracking where their opponents have campaigned.

There's more...

Everytime that I mention the likelihood that this year's nomination will be brokered, someone comments that it won't because it hasn't happened in so long. But I'm beginning to believe that a brokered convention is such a likelihood, that the only possible way it doesn't happen is if someone does like John Kerry did in '04, and start sweeping from the get go in Iowa. Something like, John Edwards wins Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire, and then South Carolina. OK, if that happened, I think that Edwards would have such media momentum that he'd probably win it all. But all it's going to take is one other winner in the first 4 states (and that's not counting Florida's likely move into the window), and February 5th happens, so the calendar is something like this:

Jan 14: Iowa

Jan 19: Nevada 

Jan 22: New Hampshire

Jan 29: South Carolina

Feb 5: Alabama, Delaware, Missouri, Oklahoma, Utah, Arizona, 
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, 
Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina and Tennessee, 
New Jersey.

Now I know that's not close to final, and some of those 2/5 contests might be just for one party or the other, but it still shows that 2008 will be more national and compacted than ever before.

Let's assume this is the schedule, and no one sweeps the first four caucuses/primaries, then how would the 2/5 national primary day do anything but assure that no candidate would achieve a majority of the delegates before the convention?

If anything, it'd make for a great political campaign.

There's more...