Cedar Rapids Gazette is a notoriously user-surly, pay to play site.  No link love possible or deserved.  The basics:

Jim Leach, who has the bluest district of any House Republican, is under 50% for re-elect - great news for challenger Dave Loebsack.

Link to my liveblog of Tom Vilsack's appearance last night at a fundraiser for State Sen. Bob Dvorsky.

I did not leave the district convention simply because there was no internet available. As a blogger, I expect wifi, but I was going to adapt.I sat down and started a little pseudo liveblogging during the first major speech.

I left because after that speech I tried to track down WHY there was no internet at a 21st century congressional district convention, and Iowa Democratic Party Staff and the local arrangements folks acted like my expectation was unreasonable.

The local guy said "no one ASKED, so we didn't think it was that important." The state party staffer told me I was biased against non-metro counties hosting the convention.  (By "metro" in Iowa we mean something like Iowa City at 60,000 or Cedar Rapids at 100,000).

In a lead editorial in this morning's Des Moines Register, former Congressman Dave Nagle blasts Gov. Tom Vilsack for going along with the DNC's 2008 primary schedule.  Nagle, who chaired the state party during the `84 caucus cycle, wants Iowa to join New Hampshire in fighting the calendar:

"We will receive heavy pressure from the governor not to do so and to honor his political manipulations the weekend of the vote. Fortunately, we will, by then, have a new governor in Terrace Hill."

Must-read full article here.

John Deeth Blog

Survey USA is out with its latest 50 state Bush approval ratings.  How would that translate into election results?

Even TEXAS is blue in this 499-30 electoral vote landslide (with Mississippi and Montana tied). Month by month, the red state shrivel. So how do we translate this into votes?

The numbers people return with Dubya's ratings.

The numbers people return with Dubya's ratings.

Assuming - and this is a big if - that approval/disapproval translates into votes, we see a Democratic electoral college landslide of 378 to 129 (they didn't survey DC but it's a safe assumption.)  Georgia, Indiana and West Virginia are tied.

We saw lots and lots of maps after the 2004 election: red and blue states, red and blue counties, The United States of Canada and Jesusland.  But here's one I never saw:

This is the Nielsen Designated Market Area (DMA) map.

While DMAs cross state lines, they are divided along county lines, so it's possible to calculate demographics AND election results for each.  But has anyone done so?  Here are some questions to ask:

what percentage of each state is in a given DMA

how much of a DMA spills over into another state

DMAs that overlap swing states vs. safe states.

A couple strategic visits, a little ad buy could make a difference in a small state.

Ready to stop the Iowa bashing yet?

Howard Dean lost the Iowa caucuses a year ago, but that doesn't mean he wants to dump them as the first presidential nominating event in 2008 if he's elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

The former Vermont governor said Thursday he sees no reason to keep Iowa from leading off the 2008 nominating season. That's a point of disagreement between Dean and another leading candidate for chairman.

"I don't believe that the system's going to be changed or that the order is going to be changed," Dean said in an interview with The Des Moines Register. "You're going to have to show me a reason to change. I'm just not going to change it for change's sake."

Full article is here.