Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

The first part of the eagerly awaited Des Moines Register poll has been released and it looks awful for Herman Cain.

Cain now stands at just 8 percent among Iowa Republicans. That’s an  almost complete collapse considering he led the poll in late October with 23 percent.  Further:  over the four days in which the poll was conducted, Cain’s support slid dramatically.  On Sunday he was at 12 percent.  By yesterday he had plunged to just 4 percent.

There is one category Cain does lead:  He’s seen as the candidate who would be most likely to have a scandal in the White House.

The full poll will be released Saturday night, but as Cain heads to Georgia to meet his wife , the Register decided to put out Cain’s poll numbers today.

Meanwhile Cain says he will have a decision by Monday and told talk show host Sean Hannity last night that one option would be to suspend his campaign.

But as Cain has told us repeatedly, he’s a different kind of candidate.

And so here is the latest missive from the Cain campaign:  Yet another fundraising appeal tied to the latest allegation that he had an affair with Ginger White.  He says he needs to gauge his support and how do you do that?

“In today’s political environment,” Cain writes, “the only way we can gauge true support is by the willingness of our supporters to invest in this effort.”

In a twist, Cain is looking for not just cash, but also testimonials. He wants supporters to send in videos explaining why the supported him in the first place and “how you believe I can help this nation by serving as  President.”