"Yellow Light for Romney in Iowa"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/67156.html

As we've been talking in class about noominations and campaigning, I thought I would highlight part of the 2012 presidential election - specifically, the Iowa caucus.
The article above illustrates the pattern of frontrunning - as the Iowa caucus will be the first state indicator of the Republican nominations, so it has been given an inordinate amount of attention in the nomination race. The Iowa caucus even has its own website (http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/) with breakdowns of poll data candidate by candidate, pages for all of the candidates, and a "candidate calendar and tracker" that shows the specific locations candidates have been in Iowa and where they are going to be. While this wealth of information certainly allows voters to get a wealth of information, who takes advantage of it? For those looking for a simple breakdown of data, the website itself can be incredibly overwhelming, and it reflects the fact that candidates place a disproportionate amount of time and effort getting votes for this one caucus.
The article also indicates that caucus members must choose both a first and second choice candidate, which reflects a key facet of the caucus itself, and is a reminder of the fact that the caucus is extremely open. However, all of the information together also shows how incomplete polling truly is - of those polled, only 38% "definitely intend to caucus" - and, of those, Romney is the first choice of only 10% while Herman Cain is the first choice of 27%. Yet when looking at the votes as a whole, Romney is the first choice of 22% while Cain is the first choice of 23% - a much closer race. The nominations (and the Iowa caucus especially) are really only shrouded in viewpoint right now, and it seems complicated and confusing to try and pick a "frontrunner" at the momet.