Obama now leads in Iowa amongst both female and male voters. Obama and Clinton are tied in terms of their support amongst Democrats, Obama has a lead of almost 2 to 1 with Independents, 35% to 18%. And Obama also is first when voters are asked who their scond choice for the nomination is.
And in Iowa as well as in the national polls, Obama is winning the argument regarding experience v. change. Amongst likely caucus attendess in Iowa, 55% want the change candidate as our nominee while 33% want the experienced candidate. This poll, along with others, appears to be undermining Clinton's message that she would be the stronger nominee.
And on two pivitol issues, Obama crushes Clinton my margins of better than 2 to 1, signaling the difficulites Clinton would have getting elected in a genral election match-up next fall with the Republican nominee. On the issue of who is the monst honest and trustworthy, Obama outpolls Clinton 31% to 15%. And on the issue of which candidate is willing to say what he or she really thinks, Obama polls 76% willing, 20% not willing while Clinton only scores 50% willing, 45% not willing.
November, 2007 is going to be a change election. And Clinton is having problems now because she is perceived as a Washington insider and is not a change candidate. And a lot of her attacks on Obama over the last two months have actually highlighted in a lot of voters minds that he is the candidate of change and she is the business-as-usual candidate.
Clinton is a weak potential nominee becuase she doesn't fit the times. And in each instance is which Clinton has attacked Obama, Obama is able to respond in a way reinforcing the perception that he is for change and she is not.
And Clinton is boxed in now. If she changes her tune and tries to run as a candidate of change, it reinforces the perception that she really doesn't say what she means, but constantly changes her positions based on what the current polls are saying.
And based on what I am seeing and what I read, Obama seems to have the superior organizations on the ground both in Iowa and New Hampshire. Obama's campaign seems to understand how important a ground game is. Not only have they been very successful in identifying their supporters but they have been able to integrate them into their ground game and put them to work finding additional supporters. This point was made vey clear during the recent JJ dinner in Iowa, where a clear majority of the 9,000 attendees at the dinner were clearly Obama supporters. And think about the organizational muscle it took to turn out all of those supporters on a Saturday night.
I think change is in the air......its a comin'.
The transcript from this mornigs show is attached and it is fascinating reading.