2012 ballots are cast, iowa caucuses on january 3rd. first up, nbc news campaign embed alex moshi is in iowa on the ground. alex, who is banking on a win in iowa? >> well, i think all the candidates right now are really trying to, you know, grasp all the voters in iowa. they want to win here. it's obviously the first nominating process -- state in the process. we've seen rick santorum here a lot. he's visited all 99 counties. mitt romney was here yesterday. drawing crowds of over 200 people. so we're really looking at it's a wide-open game. herman cain and mitt romney are still in the lead here with less than two months to go, but any of these candidates can come from behind and pull a mike huckabee from 2007, 2008. >> it's been very interesting there, alex in new hampshire, to see what's happened to michele