Iowa-nder Who Will Win?

The most useless political beauty contest of the year gets under way today, and final polling out of PPP shows a 3-way race among the government-hating bigot, the spineless millionaire, and the frothy God-botherer. 

The Republican caucus in Iowa is headed for a photo finish, with the three leading contenders all within two points of each other.  Ron Paul is at 20%, Mitt Romney at 19%, and Rick Santorum at 18%. Rounding out the field are Newt Gingrich at 14%, Rick Perry at 10%, Michele Bachmann at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 4%, and Buddy Roemer at 2%.


The momentum in the race is completely on Santorum's side. He's moved up 8 points since a PPP poll earlier in the week, while no one else has seen more than a one point gain in their support. Among voters who say they decided who to vote for in the last seven days he leads Romney 29-17 with Paul and Gingrich both at 13.

Santorum's net favorability of 60/30 makes him easily the most popular candidate in the field. No one else's favorability exceeds 52%.  He may also have more room to grow in the final 48 hours of the campaign than the other front runners: 14% of voters say he's their second choice to 11% for Romney and only 8% for Paul. Santorum's taken the lead with two key groups of Republican voters: with Tea Partiers he's at 23% to 18% for Gingrich, 16% for Paul, 15% for Bachmann, and only 12% for Romney.  And with Evangelicals he's at 24% to 16% for Gingrich, and 15% for Paul and Romney.

It seems the anti-Romney with the best timing is indeed Santorum, who could very well win this thing.  Of course, four years ago Mike Huckabee won in Iowa, and he promptly crashed and burned as everyone threw their support behind John McCain after his win in New Hampshire.  On the other hand, Barack Obama won Iowa in 2008, and that ended up putting him on the map...and eventually in the White House.  You can't say Iowa is meaningless, although for Republicans, South Carolina is the primary that seems to flag down the eventual winner.  The Palmetto State has picked the eventual GOP nominee every year since Reagan in 1980.

And Newt Gingrich had a commanding lead there before Christmas.  Now?  Who knows.  But today at least, we'll find out if Romney can win...and what the GOP base's reaction will be if he does.  If he doesn't win (and the polls show he could end up third or even fourth behind Gingrich) things get very interesting going into New Hampshire, where Romney has a 26 point margin.  If Romney doesn't win in Iowa, and finishes worse than second (very, very possible) and whoever does win in Iowa comes in second in New Hampshire, things get really crazy.

We'll see what happens today.  My gut says Romney won't win here.