Recent polling by The Des Moines Register shows Huckabee surging ahead of Romney in Iowa and Obama taking a narrow lead over Clinton. (The link includes a really neat graphic-- where you can click on each party name and see survey results in a bar chart from May, October, and November.)
Thomas Beaumont reports that Huckabee was down 29-12 to Romney in October, but is now ahead 29-24. Giuliani was a distant third at 13%. From there, Paul, Thompson, Tancredo and McCain are virtually tied-- with 6-9%. Of these, Paul's popularity has increased the most-- from less than 1% in May to 7% in November-- while Thompson and McCain have dropped considerably.
For the Democrats, a (narrow) lead has moved from Edwards in May to Clinton in October to Obama in November. In each of the three surveys, all three candidates had between 21-29%-- a very tight race.
This has notable parallels to the results of recent polling in South Carolina-- with Paul and especially Huckabee picking up pace. One wonders if Huckabee might be peaking a bit too soon. If expectations are high enough for Huckabee, then a victory in Iowa might be taken for granted. (Moreover, Huckabee's emergence has led to a spate of critical comments about his candidacy.) Meanwhile, lowered expectations for Romney might help him recover from a loss in the first contest.
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