putting a number on that than i could. former vermont governor and former dnc chairman howard dean, good to see you. thank you. next up from iowa, we ll speak with nbc s tom brokaw and talk and join one of the 1,700 caucus sites across iowa tonight. please stay with us. it, i ll be right back. they didn t take a dime. how much in fees does your bank take to watch your money ? if your bank takes more money than a stranger, you need an ally. ally bank. no nonsense. just people sense. c mon, michael! get in the game! [ male announcer ] don t have the hops for hoops with your buddies? lost your appetite for romance?
waiting to get our first results. caucus-goers are arriving at caucus sites across iowa. the doors will be closing in about 25 minutes, and the voting will begin at that point. nbc s ron mott is in johnston just outside of des moines. how are things going here? reporter: you can see the crowd filing in behind me. one of the interesting things about this particular site, one of the largest caucus sites around iowa. i asked one of the gentlemen setting the chairs, how many chairs they had for this woman, this is the caf ferrara. 400 chairs and in this precinct alone they could see as many as 800 to 1,000 people here. may have a raw cause caucus. you heard michelle bachmann talking to hopefully supporters of hers. we ll see some surrogates for campaigns as well. josh romney is here just behind me. i m not sure you can can see him on cameras, stumping for his father, former congressman from oklahoma j.c. watts will be here
amongst iowa voters polled 45% approve of president obama, 43% disapprove and if we can go immediately to the rasmussen poll, the latest one that shows the head to head between president obama and mitt romney, this is a national poll now. and it shows that mitt romney would beat president obama 45% to 39%. what do you make of those numbers? i haven t seen that poll, every recent poll that i m familiar with shows head to head that president obama beats any of the republicans in the field and i ll tell you, if you look although if you re questioning the enthusiasm in iowa or across the country but particularly in iowa for the president s campaign, look at the same situation that george w. bush found himself in when he was running for re-election, that the turnout for him at those caucuses was abysmal. nothing like 25,000 iowans we had show up at our caucus sites.
1300 precinct captains to help steer people s support at all of these caucus sites. they ve got about 169 lined up in new hampshire. what happens is when the money flows so do the support and help of professionals in the republican party but it is a huge transition. watching lots of campaigns in the past that don t have all the infrastructure. it can be difficult. it puts an enormous strain on the candidate who will be tested at every turn and on advisers to make sure events look right. for example tonight we ve seen them change the sign at least three times trying to settle on what they want the podium to look like tonight. i suspect they booked this room long before they knew they would have this sort of surge. it s smaller than you might see for a front-runner so might be another intimate night here with santorum supporters. nbc s kelly o donnell at the santorum campaign headquarters tonight. thank you. we ll be checking back in with you as the night progresses. appreciate it. joi
look at what we call the bottom four right now. we see newt gingrich, the governor rick perry, michele bachmann, jon huntsman. he s technically there even though he didn t campaign really in iowa. he s spending all of his time in new hampshire. presumably he ll come in last. he won t drop out because he s doing all of his campaigning in new hampshire. but remember, this is very early right now. it s sort of coincides, this top tier w the most recent polls we saw, not only our cnn/time poll, the des moines register poll, an nbc/marist poll. these are the three individual, the top tier. no matter how you look at these entrance polls, you can think of it as the most recent poll in iowa. because this is a poll really. and it s a little bit more accurate presumably than the other polls because this is a poll that isn t of likely caucusgoers. we know these are real caucusgoers who participated in this poll, this entrance poll as we call it. the top tier will presumably getting mo