Just in time to offset the negative buzz from the new Des Moines Register poll showing Barack Obama narrowly ahead of her in Iowa, two new polls came out today showing Hillary Clinton leading among likely caucus-goers in the state. A Pew/AP poll put her ahead of Obama 31%-26%, with Edwards trailing at 19%, and more strikingly, an Iowa State University poll had her with a comfortable 31%-24% lead over Edwards, with Obama third at 20%. Pew also showed Clinton as having robust leads in NH, SC and nationally.

But these two new polls of IA have to be reported with an asterisk: some of their data is a bit old. The ISU poll was conducted from November 6-18 (as compared with November 25-28 for the Register poll), while the Pew survey (see a discussion of the unusually long field range for this survey at Pollster.com) was run from November 7 until November 25.

On the Republican side, the ISU survey had Romney leading Huckabee 25%-22%, with the same asterisk. I'm sure that both Obama's and Huckabee's handlers will say the poll missed their candidates' most recent surges.