Check it out. The Pollster.com chart that aggregates the Iowa polling on the Democratic side shows that Obama is now clearly ahead of Hillary:
It looks like their lines crossed roughly two weeks ago, give or take. I could be wrong, but I don’t think it was readily apparent on the chart last week–or at least didn’t yet have the visual impact–that Obama had in fact taken the lead.
It’s really a rather remarkable event. If you click on the chart above you can see the trend lines dating back to mid-2006, when Edwards was the clear frontrunner and Obama didn’t even register. When Hillary passed Edwards earlier this year, Obama was still in third. He passed Edwards for second a few weeks later and then surged towards Clinton as her numbers flattened then actually dropped a bit.
It’s also interesting to note how consistently upward trending Obama’s numbers have been for the last several months. He’s grown in Iowa at a pretty steady clip since the summer, even during the period when his campaign was supposedly dead in the water. At least in the Iowa numbers, you don’t see much evidence of any significant dip there.
Were it not for the rags-to-riches rise of Mike Huckabee from virtual unknown to serious contender, if not outright leader, on the GOP side, Obama’s passing of Hillary would be the story of the campaign so far.
