Update to Des Moines Register Poll: There's a Huge "If" Attached But "If" The Poll is Accurate, It Doesn't Only Help Obama -- It Helps Huckabee

    Last night, we wrote briefly about the last Des Moines Register poll that shows Obama significantly ahead of Clinton and Edwards -- in contrast to the flow of several other polls that actually had Obama heading into last. Here's the significant difference: The Register poll, as neatly outlined by Marc Ambinder and others, posits that the Democratic caucuses will be flooded by record turnout -- driven chiefly by independents and even some Republicans. (For the record, the Register sees the composition of the Democratic caucuses as around half non-Democrats -- a number higher than even Obama's own campaign estimates.)
    In other words, the Register is predicting the Obama scenario we outlined on December 30th as one of three possibilities that could change the outcome of the caucus.
    We'll know in three days which poll has it right.

    FURTHER UPDATE: Looking further at the numbers, University of Massachusetts political analyst Ralph Whitehead has pointed out to me this morning that the Des Moines Register poll numbers imply a Democratic turnout roughly double of that in 2004 – a totally unexpected until now 250,000. Whitehead gets his numbers by guessing that at least 80% of the roughly 125,000 who showed up last time will appear again (100,000) but these will make up only 40% of the 2008 caucus universe, according to the Register.
         If that’s true, there may be an unexpected beneficiary from an Obama surge Thursday night  – Mike Huckabee. If enough Republicans are seeking out the Democratic caucuses, the hunch here is that those “switch-overs” are likelier to be Romney voters than Huckabee voters. Or, to put it another way, if Obama is now forging an appeal even to Christian evangelicals, he really is on his way to putting together one heck of a coalition. (The guess here is that even if he's a great coalition builder, no one's that good.)