It Is Caucus Day in Iowa: ROUNDUP of News and Rumor and Polls

As the title says, it is caucus day in Iowa and news, polls, rumors and predictions are flying fast and furious a mile a minute and I am going to try to roundup some of it here for you.

Lets start with memeorandum where the top stories are being blogged about just as quickly as they are coming out.

Polls and Endorsements:

Last night we brought you a Zogby poll which said Fred was seeing some kind of surge, today we see another Reuters/ C-Span/Zogby poll with the headline of “Obama Moves Into Lead Followed by Edwards; Huckabee Lead Widens”, the American Research Group poll disagrees as they show on the Democratic side, Hillary still in the lead and on the Republican side, Huckabee still leading, which brings me to the Pew Research poll released yesterday which says that John McCain has taken a 2 point lead in the GOP race, where they state “McCain – who many analysts all but wrote off over the summer – has rebuilt his base nationwide from a low of 16% in September to 22% today.”

More good news for McCain from the New York Sun says that in New Hampshire, which holds its primary January 8 and where a new poll from Suffolk Tracking shows him surging nine points ahead of Mitt Romney, who has been the front-runner there since May.

Last but not least, McCain has picked up another endorsement from a news paper, Detroit News.

Rumor:

The Politico reports the rumor that “officials” close to the Fred Thompson Presidential Campaign are saying “they expect the candidate will drop out of the race within days if he finishes poorly in Thursday’s Iowa caucus.”, this is being strongly denied by the Thompson campaign, via the Corner, who is naming their source, Rich Galen, a top adviser to Fred Thompson:

Good morning from Des Moines. I just got off the phone with Rich Galen, a top adviser to Fred Thompson, and it would be an understament to say that he is strongly denying the Politico story reporting that Thompson “will drop out of the race within days if he finishes poorly in Thursday’s caucus.”

The story cites “several Republican officials close to Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign.” Galen told me, “I’m a Republican official in the Thompson campaign, and I’m denying it.” Galen also said that no one inside the campaign was a source for the story. “I can’t put enough adjectives in front of the ‘deny’ to accurately describe how vehemently I’m denying the story,” he said.

Galen said that “just to make sure,” he checked with Thompson himself, who told him the story was not true. “We have the schedule for Saturday and Sunday in New Hampshire, and then we’re going down to South Carolina,” Galen told me.

According to Iowa Politics, Fred Thompson, in an in-studio interview with KCCI-TV, in Des Moines, said “That is absolutely made up out of whole cloth” and also said the rumor was probably spread by a rival.

Dirty tactics inpolitics? Tell me it ain’t so!!!!!!

Michael van der Galien from the PoliGazette, has another interesting tidbit about Mitt Romney and a possible nasty little surprise and here is a teaser “UPDATE: Carter answered my e-mail. It’s not the same thing. Seemingly, we’ll see two attacks – if both are right – within the next couple of days. And quite big ones at that.”

Read the whole thing for yourself at PolitGazette.

Other top stories:

In a blow to the Clinton Campaign, via an Exclusive from the Iowa Independent, Gov. Bill Richardson’s campaign is expected to direct their supporters to caucus for Sen. Barack Obama in the second round of voting at Thursday’s caucuses in precincts where he is not viable. Two sources familiar with the plan told Iowa Independent that the New Mexico Governor’s organizers have been instructed to direct supporters to Obama in the places where they fail to reach the 15% threshold for viability.

In another story from the Iowa Independent, they say Hillary Clinton understood the surface, but not the spirit of the Iowa caucuses…..almost like she understood the surface of the Pakistan elections but had no clue about the reality huh?

The New York Times reports that the candidates are pitching their last minute messages to the Iowa voters.

Weird News:

I couldn’t pass this one up….Ron Paul, the Future President of Azeroth, also discussed here. (Not being a gamer, this one completely baffled me)

As the stories, links, rumors and polls come out, I will update this throughout the day.

ENJOY CLICKING.