Democratic Dead heat in Iowa

There have been several new Iowa polls released this week -- and expect a couple more. On the Democratic side, both the LA Times/Bloomberg and Strategic Vision, a Republican polling firm, show dead heats. (More on the polls after the break)

One thing I'm intrigued by is sample for these polls. In 2004, approximately 120,000 Iowa Democrats attended the caucus. Yeah, that's all. From the beginning of September, according to Pollster.com, there have been approximately 40 polls conducted in Iowa. Adding the sample pools, almost 23,000 Iowans have been polled as likely caucus goers on the Democratic side -- or almost 1/5 of the actual amount of caucus goers have been polled. That's quite amazing, if, in fact, it proves to be true. This has got to be the most oversampled, over studied pool of 120,000+ voters in history. More after the jump...

LA Times:

In Iowa, which opens the 2008 presidential voting with its Jan. 3 caucuses, the poll found Sen. Obama of Illinois, Sen. Clinton of New York and former Sen. Edwards of North Carolina in a statistical three-way tie.

But other poll findings suggest Clinton might gain stature in both states if Democrats' concern about world affairs increases after Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The poll shows that Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire consider Clinton far better equipped than her rivals to safeguard national security -- as do Democrats around the country.

Politico on the Strategic Vision poll:

John Edwards appears to have risen to a new highpoint in Iowa, marking an upward trend over the past two weeks that places him in a statistical tie with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

A new Strategic Vision poll released Friday finds that Edwards has the support of 28 percent of likely Democratic cacucusgoers, his best standing in Iowa over the past six months. Edwards now trails Clinton by only one point and Obama by two points, well within the poll’s margin of error of 4.5 percent.

Today’s survey confirms a string of polls in the past two weeks - another by Strategic Vision as well as recent polls by CNN and InsiderAdvantage. All demonstrate a steady ascension by Edwards, while Clinton and Obama appear to have stabilized.