Eve of the poll in New Hampshire and snow threatens. While Granite State voters are hardy souls, the story goes that the last time there was a huge snowsorm on primary day was in 1984, when Gary Hart's younger voters turned out as Walter Mondale's older supporters stayed at home. Hart won the primary, but in th long run Mondale took the nomination, only to lose 49 states to Ronald Reagan.

Despite the weather, a record turnout could be on the cards.

Kerry's still the front-runner, although his commanding lead of a couple of days ago appears to have narrowed, with Howard Dean crawling back into a solid second place despite the fact that the late night comics and Sunday news shows haven't exhausted the "I have a scream" clip.

And talking of the late night shows, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart might well be the funniest political satire around, but what it has undoubtedly done very cleverly has been to tap into the fact that younger viewers are using the comedy shows as their source for campaign news.


A Newsweek poll, meanwhile, gives Kerry the edge over Bush in a general election matchup, the first time any of the Democrat contenders has broken ahead of the incumbent.

With electability such a prominent issue for Democrats, that can only strengthen Kerry's hand. But the other campaigns think the Massachussets senator is getting a bit of an easy ride.

Looking ahead to South Carolina; the latest poll has Edwards edging Kerry, with Al Sharpton in third - about half the registered Democrats in the state are black - and Dean back in fifth place behind Clark.