Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are on top in the just-out Des Moines Register poll, making it seem increasingly likely that these two will achieve a similar statistical victory in Thursday’s Iowa caucuses…”seems” being the operative term. Obama came in with 32% of likely Democratic caucusgoers (up from 28% in the paper’s late November poll), Hillary Clinton was at 25% and John Edwards was at 24%.

Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen cautions that this latest poll can’t be taken as a predictor due the perceived softness of support, Democratic and Republican respondents being respectively 6% and 4% undecided, the fact that 60% and 40% of the Democratic and Republican respondents are first-timers (“the youth vote will always leave you at the altar” — MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 2004) and so on.
C’mon…this is where the excitement is this week, not with Ellen Page‘s growing chances of nabbing the Best Actress Oscar or the new Harry Langdon DVD box set. The only thing that beats it is the prospect seeing Cloverfield within a few days.
Update: Mark Halperin‘s “The Page” reports that a CNN/Opinion Research has a final poll with Clinton 33, Obama 31 and Edwards 22. Zogby has Clinton at 30, Obama at 26 and Edwards at 25