Sooner or later, Iowa conservatives will have to decide about the 2012 field

DES MOINES — Voters in Iowa are notorious for not being willing to settle too early on any candidate. They use their influence as the state that goes first in the primary voting to vote to make sure they meet and greet and get a picture with every presidential hopeful before committing.

This time though they genuinely just can’t seem to make up their minds, and veteran party activists here say that this reluctance, particularly among the most conservative voters, to coalesce behind one candidate has created an unusually volatile race for the nomination. This is only heightened by the tendency among a crucial bloc of voters to shift drastically from one hopeful to another in a short period of time.

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It seems that both former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) have small chunks of Iowa Republicans who will likely stick with them to the end.

But Republicans here say that any one of the five other candidates bunched in the polls — Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn), businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) — could suddenly rally conservatives and win the caucuses Jan. 3.

Equally likely is that any of these five could also quickly loose momentum and fade altogether.

So far there is no evidence that Cain, who has been leading in some recent polls here, has lost any support in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations that have plagued him all week. But it would not be a huge surprise if that happened in coming days or weeks: Both Bachmann and Perry have surged ahead in the polls at different times only to quickly recede.

“I’ve never seen this level of undecided voters,” said Tim Albrecht, who worked on the Iowa campaigns of businessman Steve Forbes (2000) and Romney (2008).

“Usually, when you’re staring at November, you have a good sense of who will be in the top three on caucus night. As of now though, it’s anyone’s guess as to who will get their ticket punched out of Iowa,” added Albrecht, now the communications director for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad.

The momentum shifts have been notable. “We’ve watched what’s happened in this race, Michele Bachmann caught fire and won (the straw poll), then Perry came in and he went ahead, so there’s been a lot of ups and downs, and that could happen two or three more times,” Branstad said.

Craig Robinson, a longtime GOP aide here who now runs a blog called the Iowa Republican, said that Iowa Republicans reflect the mood of the party nationally. While voters in Iowa get to see the candidates in person far more than in most states, the debates and national media coverage are also shaping their opinions. So they looked at Perry as a more electable alternative to Bachmann when he first entered, then abandoned him as he struggled in debates. But like Republicans nationally, they liked Cain after watching him win the Florida straw poll, so backed him instead of returning to Bachmann.

Now, in the wake of the Cain controversy, party strategists expect voters to give second looks to the other candidates, particularly Gingrich, who has not yet had a surge.