Edge in Iowa hard to find among key groups
DES MOINES -- Democratic candidates are having a hard time gaining advantage among women and union members, two groups that could determine who wins the Iowa caucuses on Thursday. The two top Republicans are in the same near-deadlock when it comes to voters who say the next president should be a fiscal conservative.
Women break even for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama — 32% apiece in a new Des Moines Register poll — despite Clinton's appeal as a pioneer and her push for women's support. And for all their union endorsements, Clinton and former senator John Edwards are in a three-way tie with Obama among labor households.
"I like what she says. I like it that she's a woman," Beth Davis-Fleming says of Clinton, who is endorsed by her union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). But Davis-Fleming, 61, of Marshalltown, is a precinct captain for Obama.
On the Republican side, the Register poll shows former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, besting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney almost 2-to-1 among voters who say it's more important for the next president to be a social conservative.
Those who prefer a fiscally conservative president are a larger group — 41% in the poll versus 26% who say they prefer a social conservative. Romney has just a slight edge among the larger group in the Register poll, leading Huckabee 29% to 25%. That's despite his business background and heat Huckabee has taken from the anti-tax Club For Growth for raising some taxes as governor.
John Gilliland, senior vice president of the 1,300-company Association of Business and Industry, says Romney built an early business base but then became preoccupied with defining himself on social issues. Other candidates gained ground, he says, and now "we have members in nearly every camp."
Fiscal conservatives "are all over the map. There's no consensus" on a candidate, says Don Racheter, head of a free-market think tank in Mount Pleasant.
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