American Research Group released its latest Iowa poll today, which shows the ticket of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden leading Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan by 51 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, with just 4 percent of respondents undecided.  

ARG surveyed 600 likely voters between September 20 and 23, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. ARG found Obama/Biden leading among respondents over age 50 as well as among respondents between the ages of 18 and 49. Men split for the Republican ticket 51 percent to 45 percent, but women went for the Democratic incumbents 56 percent to 39 percent. No-party respondents deadlocked at 47 percent for each ticket, but Obama/Biden had higher support among Democrats sampled than Romney/Ryan did among Republicans.

ARG did not release as many details as last week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of Iowa, but the toplines are similar. Like the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll, ARG sampled more registered Democrats (36 percent of the likely voters) than Republicans (32 percent) or no-party voters (32 percent).

I assume the Des Moines Register will publish an Iowa poll by Selzer and Co soon, but maybe budget cuts have forced them to cut back to one statewide survey per election-year autumn, instead of a September poll and another in late October.

Sunday’s Des Moines Register included a feature by Jennifer Jacobs analyzing $29.6 million in political advertising for and against the presidential candidates in Iowa from April through August. The Obama campaign spent more than $13.7 million on television advertising in Iowa during that period. Outside groups supporting Obama spent less than $100,000 here, and the Democratic National Committee spent less than $30,000.

In contrast, outside groups supporting Romney spent more than $8 million on Iowa tv ads from April through August, more than the $5.7 million Romney’s campaign spent on tv here. Republican National Committee or joint RNC/Romney campaign buys added another $1.9 million to the pro-Romney tv ad spending during the period.

From Jacobs’ article:

President Barack Obama has outspent Republican ex-CEO Mitt Romney in the heavily Republican Council Bluffs television market and in the GOP-leaning Sioux City area, a Des Moines Register analysis of ad spending shows.

And Romney has done more advertising than the president in the Quad Cities, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids markets – all consistently Democratic territories. […]

In Iowa, Obama started firing in January. If the president hadn’t unleashed his ad bonanza after the GOP message inoculation of the caucuses, Iowa likely would have tilted dramatically to Romney, strategists on both sides said.

GOP-leaning outside groups then stepped up “out of sheer necessity,” said [Republican Robert] Haus, a strategist from Urbandale. Until Romney officially became the nominee at the convention, he couldn’t spend the funds his campaign had raised for the general election, or legally access the funds from the Republican committees. As an incumbent, the president didn’t have those restrictions, and could spend his campaign dollars freely.

“When advertising is equal and the choice is left to the people of Iowa, we win,” said Romney’s political director, Rich Beeson. “So when all things are neutral, Iowans gravitate toward Mitt.”

Any comments about the presidential election are welcome in this thread.