Huckabee Gaining Ground in Iowa
Huckabee, Republican candidate for President, is gaining ground in the Iowa Caucuses. At least according to a poll by the University of Iowa.
On the Republican side, the Hawkeye poll showed that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has widened his overall lead by 8 percentage points, to 36.2%. But Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, has gained ground despite spending just $1.7 million compared to Romney’s $53.6 million. Huckabee is up from less than 2 % in the same poll in August to 12.8%, putting him in a statistical tie for second place with Rudy Giuliani who garnered 13.1%. Giuliani had spent $30.2 million as of September 30, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
Maybe it was all Chuck Norris? I doubt it. Somebody better explain to me how a guy spends less than 1/25th of the frontrunner and is gaining on him? Maybe there is something to this Huckabee guy? I still think he’s too far to the right to get a decent vote even if he does win the candidacy. Giuliani just rubs me the wrong way. I’m not even sure why. I haven’t officially got an opinion on Romney and at the moment, my favorites are Huckabee and Thompson.
On the other side of the poll, the Democrats are all bunched up at the top with Clinton and Obama at a near deadlock with 28.9% and 26.6% respectively. Third place John Edwards dropped 6% to take in 20% of the polltakers.
Now, the problem with this and many other polls is in the interpretation. The total amount of people taking the poll was 285 for the Republican poll and 306 for the Democrats. What is that? About .05% of the population of Iowa? Not exactly a representative poll. And they still claim only a 5.8% margin of error. But that’s enough to launch John Edwards into first place if you skew it just right. And all of a sudden the Republican race is a lot closer than it maybe is.
As my statistics professor in college once said, “A good statistician can make any poll look good for any situation.”