It's Caucus Eve, and after a seemingly endless period of campaigning, punditry, debates, analysis, counter-analysis, polling, conventional wisdom and spin, Iowans will finally have their say as to who they want to be the nominees from the two parties Thursday night. 

Conventional wisdom at the beginning of December said that Hillary would probably eke out a victory over a surging Barack Obama, and Mike Huckabee might beat previous frontrunner Mitt Romney by double digits, so impressive was the Huckasurge.  But here we are, 30 days and several holidays later, and conditions on the ground are lending themselves to a double victory for Mitt Romney in Iowa on the 2nd.

A literal plethora of gaffes by Governor Huckabee, many on foreign policy, an issue that the Republican nominee, whoever it ends up being, simply cannot afford to get wrong when the country is at war, have led to a decline in support in the same polls that led to Huckabee's rise to frontrunner status.  In addition, once closer scrutiny followed his rise to the top, Huckabee commited several unforced political errors that made several political watchers scratch their heads, wondering how Huckabee would ever handle the pressures of the presidency if he couldn't handle the pressures of his Iowa primary campaign.

The net result is that Iowa is now a dead heat, which means that whoever has the best statewide organization or ground game, whoever turns out the most Caucus-goers on a sub-freezing, windy night in Iowa, is going to win.  From Ron Fournier's AP analysis piece yesterday, 

—He has a paltry political organization in a state that values the ground game, according to an informal survey of GOP county chairs and co-chairs. "I haven't seen much of a sign of him or his people," said Jim Conklin, chairman of the Linn County GOP.

—He can also be disarmingly honest. Asked whether Romney should stop running negative ads, Huckabee said, "I'm not going to try to run his campaign."

"I'm having enough trouble running mine."

Romney has many more resources in Iowa, and he's running a smarter campaign than Huckabee.  Advantage: Romney.

Barack Obama has opened up a lead in Iowa outside the margin of error, and the Hillary camp has begun to downplay the importance of a victory in Iowa.  If Obama does go on to pick up the win Thursday night, it's another win for Mitt Romney.

Next week in the New Hampshire basket, the one in which John McCain has put his boomlet eggs, Mitt Romney is in a statistical dead heat with the feisty Arizona Senator.  But when you actually look at the numbers, Romney's support has remained around 30%.  McCain has come from out of nowhere to within the margin of error because of perceived weakness in the other GOP candidates, but also because New Hampshire is an open primary state, where independents can come crashing the GOP's primary party.  In fact, McCain's numbers nationwide tend to be highest in the states where there is an open primary.  In closed primary states, McCain is nowhere, statistically. 

Obama's popularity also comes largely from independent voters. Again, going back to conventional wisdom from a few weeks ago, the thought was that McCain possibly sneaks a win in New Hampshire if Hillary holds on in Iowa and beats Obama, thereby depressing Obama's independent support in New Hampshire, causing them to drift over into the Republican primary to meddle there.

But if recent polling in Iowa holds, and Obama wins Iowa going away, independents may take another look next Tuesday and see New Hampshire as the state in which they could continue to drive the stake into the heart of the Hillary Clinton campaign.  If the independents stay with the Obama wave, it's going to be very hard to McCain to keep up his momentum in New Hampshire.  

But in the words of our good friend, Mark Steyn, "Who knows, huh?"