good evening upon. i m ali velshi sitting in for erin burnett tonight. out in front, campaign is kicking into high gear. candidates are criss-crossing the state, trying to pick up last-minute support for the first con tefrt in the race for the gop nomination. let s go straight to the political correspondent. jim acosta is on the ground in iowa. good to see you. lots of campaign events and everybody is back in the game. a recent poll shows 12% of voters in iowa, still undecided. you spoke with the iowa gop chair about the race. what did he have to say? ali, basically he said this is a caucus race in iowa that he has never seen before. basically, this is the most unsettled field of candidates that a lot of republican operatives have seen in the state for a long time. if you look at the polling you have three candidates at the top right now. mitt romney, newt gingrich and ron paul and there is a medium tier of the other three candidates. rick santorum, michele bachmann and ric
our latest polls on the republican race, they are just coming out this minute andy sho stunning change in fortune for two of the republican hopefuls. mitt romney still plead leads in iowa with 21%. ron paul is right behind at 22%. but look at this. rick santorum has jumped into third place with 16%. tripling his shows just three weeks ago. meantime, newt gingrich has fallen off a cliff. at least it seems like it now. he s at only 14% down from 33% in our last poll. rick perry is at 11%. michele bachmann, still in single digits, followed by jon huntsm huntsman, who has written off campaigning here in iowa. there s less drama in romney s backyard of new hampshire. he s at 44% there, followed by paul at 17%, gingrich at 16%. the rest of the poll in single digits. joining us now from des moines, candy crowley. candy, i guess the headline here is not necessarily that mitt romney is number one in iowa, although he is even though he really hasn t spent a lot of time here. but all of
rhetoric certainly is getting sharper. and there are seven major candidates now but after seven more days, will some of those candidates start falling by the wayside on the campaign trail? that s coming up in our strategy session this hour. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we re here in dubuque. a bit chilly but no snow. it s getting ready, a week from today, the iowa caucuses. you re looking at live pictures from dubuque. this will be the first state to have an impact on the 2012 presidential campaign, and it s all happening here in iowa. the republican caucuses candidate are out on the campaign trail today. they re scrambling to cover as much ground as they possibly can. newt gingrich slipping a bit, but still among the leaders. he s ready to roll across the state by bus. he ll join me live here in dubuque later this hour for an in-depth interview, but let s begin with cnn s jim acosta, he s in des moines, the state capital. iowa certainly very much up fo
you get up. there isn t a lot of oxygen. and the air is very thin. the pressure of the helium inside the balloon is much greater than the surrounding air pressure, so it continues to expand until finally, the balloon pops. and the craft comes plummeting back to earth at more than 100 miles an hour. so the parachute deploys maybe 30 seconds after the balloon bursts. it doesn t do anything until it gets the heavier air. at one point, it rocked head over heels. even though it didn t have head or heels. it was pretty amazing because there s a lot of reasons it wouldn t work. i ve shot a lot of things. that by far takes the cake as the most impressive thing i have ever shot. coming up, party balloons, a lawn chair, and a dream. you look up and see a little cloud. you say i wish i could get on