ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This must be the night of the Iowa caucuses because Andrew Kohut is here. And he's president of the Pew Research Center. Good to see you.
ANDREW KOHUT: Very happy. Thank you.
SIEGEL: Once again. First, I want you to do the - nothing up your sleeves here. We haven't seen any numbers from any exit or entrance polls or another. No one has been coy about this. We do not know a thing about it, what's happening.
KOHUT: We don't know a thing about it. It hasn't happened yet.
SIEGEL: What are the questions that you're going to hope to answer when you look at the data coming out of Iowa? First, on the Democratic side.
KOHUT: From the Edwards' point of view, whether his experience in Iowa, whether his populism, his appeals to middle-class voters, feeling their pain, can make a - can allow him to make in rows on the other two candidates, who've largely been somewhat ahead of him in these very close polls.
SIEGEL: The Des Moines Register poll had made what was either a very interesting judgment call or an extremely trenchant observation about the 2008 race, they assumed an unusually large share of the Democratic turnout at least, if not the Republican turnout as well, to be first-time caucus goers - we heard a couple in Michele Norris' piece - and independence. What do you think about that?
KOHUT: Extraordinary. Seventy-two percent of the people in this poll who were backers of Obama had never caucused before. And for Hillary, it wasn't much larger. It was 58 percent. Certainly, whether - if there is a very high turnout of first-timers, it's going to advantage Obama. If on the other hand it's what - there are fewer old timers, more people who've been there before, it's going to help Hillary and Edwards to some extent.
SIEGEL: On the Republican side, what questions are you looking to see answered?
KOHUT: Well, what we've seen so far in Iowa and elsewhere is the emergence of a divide with - what had been a previously very unified Republican Party. We have the Christian conservative supporting one candidate, Mike Huckabee in the Des Moines Register poll by a margin of 57 to 19 over Romney, and then, the moderates and liberals supporting Romney by almost the same margin. And will that divide be as sharp as this poll number suggest? Which of these two candidates will prevail and will it, in fact, be social conservatism that drives preferences or not?
SIEGEL: And though, one number that we may not know until late at night and even then is how many people took part in the two caucuses. That is this is - the Iowa is a state that goes either way in presidential races and whichever party generates more enthusiasm could actually win this state.
KOHUT: That's right because independents have an opportunity to go either way, and there's - as you've mentioned earlier, there's a pretty high concentration of independents, particularly on the Democratic side of the race.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Andy.
KOHUT: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: Andrew Kohut, he's president of the Pew Research Center. And our coverage continues online, where you can read about how Iowa's caucuses work and watch a video about the process. That's NPR.org/elections.