Clinton, Obama, Edwards Fighting Door to Door in Iowa

The New York Times has an articleout dated Sunday, November 18, 2007, about Hillary Clinton increasing the time she is spending in Iowa. Although she has a huge lead in national polls, she doesn't have such a lead in Iowa. There the campaign is a lot closer. According to the article, a large share of Clinton's support comes from Democrats who have never participated in the caucus process. This is from the article:

More than 60 percent of those who have identified themselves as Clinton supporters, senior strategists say, have never participated in the Iowa caucuses. It is a far higher share than the campaign had been anticipating, which suggests that many of the reliable rank-and-file Democrats have chosen another candidate. So the Clinton campaign is working to expand its universe of supporters to women who have never participated.

This is what the major campaigns are doing to counteract the fact that her opponents are doing well in Iowa:

In the final seven weeks of the race, all campaigns are increasing their efforts here, placing new advertisements and investing more resources. To fight the new push by the Clinton campaign, rivals are also planning to spend nearly all their time in Iowa in December, hoping to raise doubts about her candidacy. While the Obama and Edwards campaigns have been gradually building for months toward this moment, the Clinton campaign has bolstered its activity here in recent weeks, hiring 100 new workers to concentrate on a person-to-person drive to explain the quirky process of the caucuses, with a goal of having 50,000 in-home visits by Christmas.

The article has a graphic up which shows the favorability rating for each Party's top five candidates and, where they exist, the favorability rating for the same candidates nationwide. What is interesting about this is that Clinton's favorability ratings for Iowa are less than for the nation as a whole while both Obama and Edwards have favorability ratings for Iowa that are ahead of their favorability ratings nationwide. Below are the names of each of the top three Dem candidates with the first number being their national favorability rating, the second number being their Iowa favorability rating, and the third being the percentage of Democrats who say they will vote for that candidate in the caucuses:

Clinton: 79%, 52% and 25%
Edwards: 44%, 73%, and 23%
Obama: 56%, 72%, and 22%.

You can see that Clinton's and Edwards' favorability ratings in Iowa are both the reverse of what they are in the United States as a whole. This suggests that Clinton's name recognition and generally positive national publicity are not nearly as effective for her in Iowa as they are in the U.S. as a whole. It also suggests that once people actually hear Edwards' and Obama's message, they like them better.

If Clinton was the lose both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, the race for the Democratic nomination would get a lot more interesting. On the other hand, if she wins both of these early contests, with all the publicity that she would gain from those wins, then the nomination race may be over.