Last I checked, Maricopa Joe wasn't on the ballot, so let's re-rail.
Alright, thank you, that was getting a little ridiculous.
So anyway - some food for thought. Super PACs who have either declared or been reasonably judged to be aligned with Mitt Romney have spent
$17 Million on various advertising in Iowa, a state with about 1.2 million households. And that's just Romney, a few others like Perry, Gingrich, and Paul combined are bringing it close to $30 Million total, but it says volumes that over half the ad-buying in the state is from Romney (and his PACs that he totally has nothing to do with) who swore early in the debates that he probably wouldn't even compete in Iowa because he was sure he wouldn't do well there anyway.
Commercials are on every channel at every hour, especially high-viewership stuff like news and sports. Every residential phone in the state is ringing off the hook with recorded autodialers. And some places like MediaMatters and such have calculated that about 85% of the
negative campaign ads, i.e. the ones denouncing another candidate, are targeted at Newt Gingrich, who's perhaps understandable but laughably crying foul. And of course, it's worth noting that probably 90% of the money being spent is from those new Super PACs, meaning they
don't have to disclose who they are or where they get their money, and nobody believes there is genuinely no communication between S-PAC directors and the campaigns they're pushing for. Of all the people in the world that opponents of the
Citizens United decision could have gotten for an ally, you can now count in Gingrich.
Meanwhile, early turnout has been surprisingly low compared to previous years. The Iowa Caucus isn't a pull-the-level ballot, everybody participating has to go to a location around the same time later in the day, but all the same it's a noteworthy. Nobody has any reliable "exit" polling yet, so who knows why.
Also meanwhile, the Obama reelection campaign is out in full force in Iowa, even though he's literally the only name on the ballot. Mostly, because they're using the primaries as training grounds for their Presidential campaign, in terms of building organizations of supporters to roust people to vote later on. And to try (vainly) to put a lid on the inevitable Fox News story that low Democratic primary turnout (for a one-name ballot) means Democrats are disgusted with him or something.