Survey USA has polled Iowa and found that Obama leads McCain 47% to 38%. Looking at the crosstabs, this looks somewhat better than the Ohio poll last week did, since this has Obama winning independents 48% to 33%.

However, this poll also has a big percentage of Democrats in the sample - the numbers are 45% Democrats, 28% Republicans, and 24% independents. The CNN Iowa exit poll for 2004 put the voting numbers at 34% Democrats, 36% Republicans, and 30% independents.

So either we've seen a big shift in party ID in Iowa (not impossible, the entire country is having buyer's remorse over the Republicans, and Iowa more so than most states, it seems), or the poll is suspect. Take your pick.

They also polled various VP combinations, as they've been doing in other states. Since Edwards has consistently polled as the strongest pick for Obama, and Huckabee and Romney have consistently polled as the strongest picks for McCain, I think this is probably mostly just name recognition at this point. However, it's worth noting that Obama/Edwards beats McCain/Pawlenty by a ludicrous 26 percentage points. The best combination for McCain (McCain/Huckabee) beats the worst combination for Obama (Obama/Rendell) by only 8. Make of that what you will.

Link- http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/ 05/27/vp-head-to-head-in-iowa/

Update-

Here's what Barack Obama plans to say at 3:30 pt ET in North Las Vegas, NV:
"I just had the privilege of visiting with Felicitas Rosel and Francisco Cano at their home here in Las Vegas.

Today, John McCain is having a different kind of meeting. He's holding a fundraiser with George Bush behind closed doors in Arizona. No cameras. No reporters. And we all know why. Senator McCain doesn't want to be seen, hat-in-hand, with the President whose failed policies he promises to continue for another four years."

Tune into your LIVE news feeds to see him.

Link- http://thepage.time.com/ Transcript http://thepage.time.com/obamas-full-remarks-in-north-las-vegas-tuesday/

There's more...

The new University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll (pdf) out this morning has some intriguing results on both sides. But first a note about the poll's methodology. It's important to note that the question asked of respondents was open-ended:

If your caucus was today, who would you support for president in your caucus? Just tell me the name.

Which leads Mark Blumenthal at Pollster to issue the following warning:

We have not included the previous Hawkeye polls in our Iowa chart because of the use of the open-ended question. This is not a statement about the quality of the survey. As I wrote back in August:

This [open-ended question] undoubtedly provides a tougher test of voter commitment, but also produces a much bigger undecided and renders the results incomparable to other Iowa polls.

With that in mind, the results are as follows:

The Democrats (306 LVs, Oct. 17-24, MOE 5.5%):

CandidateOctoberAugustRCP 5-poll Ave.Clinton28.924.828.8Obama26.619.323.6Edwards202621.2Richardson7.29.48.8Biden5.3--Don't Know8.914.4-

This has got to be a painful result for Edwards, coming on the heels of the news that he's just finished visiting all 99 counties in Iowa vs. 59 for Obama and 39 for Clinton. Contrary to popular belief about Iowa politics, if the most recent polls are right, it would appear that there is an inverse correlation between number of towns visited and how well the candidates are polling, and it just may be an indication to Edwards that it's time to start advertising before an "Edwards falling" storyline takes hold. But there is some good news for Edwards: perhaps the more important statistic, the likelihood of attendance at the Jan. 3 caucus.

On the bright side is that the people who do support Edwards have a history of showing up when it counts. Nearly 76% of Edwards' poll supporters attended the 2004 caucus, while 58% of Clinton's and 55% of Obama's supporters made the trip four years ago. "If we only look at caucus-goers who are almost certain to attend, we find that Edwards makes up the gap with Obama and Clinton, and moves clearly ahead," said David Redlawsk, the poll's director and an associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa.

The Republicans: (285 RVs, Oct. 17-24, MOE 5.8%):

CandidateOctoberAugustRCP 4-poll Ave.Romney36.227.826.3Giuliani13.111.713.3Huckabee12.81.813.8Thompson11.47.615McCain63.17Don't Know14.927.4-

The story here is Huckabee who's increased his share of the vote by 11 points in almost 2 months. His tie for second place tracks with other polling in the state and indeed, looking at the internals, it's clear that his growing strength comes from the born again/evangelical crowd. While Romney gets 29% of that vote, Huckabee is close behind with 21%. But it's the non-evangelical vote that the candidates will need to work on if they hope to eat away at Romney's support: he leads this voting block with 41% of the vote, more than 3x anyone else.

Romney's impressive increase in support since August should not go unnoticed, however. Conventional wisdom was that his support was beginning to plateau and Giuliani was starting to close the gap. Clearly, such a trend is not evident here. At the same time, Romney polls so far above his average that it could be an outlier, we'll have to wait for more polling out of the state to confirm if in fact he's surging going into the final 2 months.

There's more...

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pb cs.dll/article?AID=/20071006/NEWS09/7100 5047

Hillary Clinton has climbed into first place in a new Des Moines Register poll of Iowans expected to participate in the state's Democratic presidential caucuses, with John Edwards and Barack Obama both in striking distance.

The Iowa Poll shows 29 percent of likely caucusgoers preferring Clinton, a New York senator, an improvement from the Register's most recent poll in May.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, was the choice of 23 percent in the new poll, slipping from the top spot since the May survey to nearly even with Obama.

Obama, an Illinois senator, was at 22 percent , virtually unchanged from May.

There's more...