DATELINE: Iowa City, Iowa

“Only a numbskull thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about” (Amy Archer, The Hudsucker Proxy)

Here’s the latest polling for Iowa.

But polling schmolling. Marlene the clinical scientist from the Hillary Clinton rally last night seemed to be for Clinton – she clapped along in all the right places, wore the Clinton For President stickers, but admitted afterwards that she was still undecided.

“I’m going to check out Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Mitt Romney when they’re in town tomorrow (i.e. today). I’ve still got 48 hours to decide and I want to be absolutely sure.”

Another thing that will heavily compromise the polling in this part of Iowa is that we’re in a university town. Obama’s surge has been attributed to his ability to galvanise the youth vote. But the youth vote ain’t here – the campus is a frozen wasteland. Iowa City’s students are at home – mostly in Illinois – for the holidays, and any promises they may have made to come back to ’school’ (university) three weeks early in order to caucus for Obama is going to be severely tempered by the ludicrously cold temperatures. It’s only 4 degrees. Farenheit. Last night the bogeys were freezing in my nose.

Here, by the way, is the story of how we got from Chicago to Iowa, with our new best friends Jess and Mark – written up for the UK’s leading political weekly, the New Statesman. More on Hillary coming soon. Right now we have an appointment with Mr Obama.