In Iowa Run-Up, Edwards Uses Fighting Words

That message is strong brew and not for everyone, but it has found a following. Edwards is counting on enough Iowans -- those in small towns and rural areas especially -- to buy into it to put him over the top on caucus night.

-- Dan Balz

CALLING IOWA

Pollsters, Campaigns Keep Phone Lines Busy

When Iowans return home Thursday evening after the caucuses, they'll be greeted by an uncommon quiet: No pollsters or campaigns will be calling.

Iowa has been at the front of the political debate for most of the year, and during that time, Iowans' phones have been ringing incessantly.

A spate of new polls pushes the total number of Iowa "likely voters" to have participated in surveys this year to nearly 80,000. As a ratio of voters polled to expected turnout, this must be something of a record -- in 2004 about 120,000 people participated in the Democratic caucuses, and in 2000 about 90,000 caucused in the GOP contest.

It's not just public pollsters calling. Campaigns have been known to set up a phone bank or two to gauge opinion, solicit support and cajole voters to actually show up and spend hours caucusing in the middle of winter.

A month and a half ago, eight in 10 likely Democratic caucusgoers and nearly six in 10 on the GOP side said they'd been called by at least one campaign.

A new Iowa poll for MSNBC-McClatchy, conducted by Mason-Dixon, came out Sunday and goes deeper than the headline-grabbing horse-race numbers, showing, for example, the strength of support each candidate carries into the final five days of campaigning.

On the GOP side, Mike Huckabee's supporters were the most likely to say they will "stick" with their choice, while Mitt Romney's favorability rating is higher than Huckabee's (58 to 47 percent), perhaps suggesting that he draws from a broader pool of voters in an election where the outcome may come down to a small number of votes.

One horse-race finding that jumps out is that support for Huckabee is at 23 percent, down nine percentage points from the same poll a month ago, while Romney is up seven points to 27 percent over the same period.

-- Jon Cohen