Iowa even more important

The Politico has an article on the increasing importance of Iowa to Democrats. I've talked before about Super-Duper Tuesday becoming too big to matter, and it seems that this is becoming the case, as frontloading has made the early primaries/caucuses more important, not less.

Here's the points made in the article. First of all, the level of activity for Democratic candidates is enormous--96 total campaign posts open in the state. Second, six candidates are campaigning heavily in the state: Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Biden and Dodd. The conclusion is that Democrats are not focusing on larger states at the expense of Iowa; the article names Iowa as "the central battle of the Democratic primary."

The pattern started with Carter. Since then every candidate to win Iowa on the Democratic side has won the nomination, with two exceptions, 1988 and 1992. The last one was of course due to the state being ceded to the favorite son Tom Harkin. In 1988 a candidate from a neighboring state, Dick Gephardt, beat Paul Simon and Dukakis as he was expected to do, and the media story was Pat Robertson's finish over George H. W. Bush. The big mo will go to whoever wins Iowa this time, since everyone's campaigning heavily and it's up in the air (59% in the latest poll said they might vote for someone else).