The Iowa Polls:Fourth Week of December

 The Dems: Only one poll tracking Iowa has been registered since last week, and it gave good news to O'Malley and Clinton, both taking a few points from Sanders. Overall, the relative positions remain steady, with Clinton holding on to a double digit lead over Sanders, while O'Malley trails far behind, still hoping to get ahead of None of the Above.

The GOP: My standard operating procedure is to track the candidates who are doing better than the None of the Above average, and I will admit to fudging those rules in two cases. I should ignore O'Malley on the Democratic side and should give some credit to Jeb:(, who is now at 5%, slightly above the 4.6% number for None of the Above number for December. Here are my reasons for the inconsistencies.

1. On the Democratic side, there is so little data to track, adding O'Malley to the mix doesn't make the graph any harder to read.

2. Jeb:( is not making a surge, the NotA has taken a plunge. Jeb:( has actually gone down, from 5.5% in November to 5.0% in December, not even half the very weak numbers of The Completely Sane and Honest Ben Carson.

As for the leaders, the news gets better and better for the two de facto front runners, Donald Trump and Ted 'The Snake' Cruz, while Rubio and Carson are slipping slightly.

This will be the last report on the blog in 2015 and on Sunday the 3 of January the weekly reports will begin again. I wish all my readers a Happy New Year and the polling starts to get serious, especially in the first two states to report.