With just four days to go before the Iowa Caucuses, Mitt Romney appears to catching Mike Huckabee in the Republican race, while the Democratic race remains extremely tight.

On the Republican side, it looked just a couple of weeks ago like Huckabee was running away with the contest. Now, Romney’s attack ads against Huckabee on immigration and crime appear to be taking a toll on the former Arkansas governor.

Last week, Huckabee held an average 5.2 percentage point lead in the six most recent polls. Now, Romney holds an average 0.6 percentage point lead in the five most recent polls.

But the polls show widely different results. For example, the Quad City Times poll taken Dec. 26-27, shows Huckabee up by 7 points (34-27 percent) over Romney. Yet, the American Research Group poll taken Dec. 26-28 shows Romney leading by 9 points (32-23) over Huckabee. (A week ago, American Research Group had Huckabee ahead by 8 points, so this poll is showing a dramatic reversal.)

None of the other major GOP candidates are showing much movement — with all of them pulling support of about 11 percent or less.

In the Democratic race, it continues to be a tight three-way race. Averaging the last five polls, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are all within 2.6 points of one another — well within the margins of error. The averages show Clinton with 28.4, Obama with 26.4 and Edwards with 25.8 percent.

Those numbers are probably most encouraging to Edwards; he’s on the upswing in the past week, while Clinton and Obama have tipped downward ever so slightly.

In New Hampshire, it’s a two-way tie between Clinton and Obama. On the Republican side, Romney leads, but Sen. John McCain has the big momentum.

For more details on these and other polls, go to Real Clear Politics.

And finally, if you haven’t checked out our new blog, Oles in ‘08, you’ve got a lot of fun reading ahead of you. Students from St. Olaf College are working on campaigns in New Hampshire and they’ve written about their encounters with candidates — impressed with McCain, bored by Rudy Giuliani — and with voters, many of whom sound like they’re on the breaking point from the incessant phone calls and door-knocks from the campaigns. It’s great, insightful and fun reading. Check it out here — Oles in ‘08.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 12:14 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Main, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Presidential Democratic, Presidential Republican, Rudy Giuliani. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.