"The races are fluid..."

Don't believe the media -- except perhaps the more reliable McClatchy group which admits that neither the media nor representatives of the candidates are getting it right.  There are no frontrunners in either New Hampshire or Iowa.  There's plenty of room for some big surprises.

Huge numbers of voters in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa and New Hampshire remain undecided and, in many cases, unimpressed by major candidates.

"There's a lot of confusion among people right now," said Pamela Choquette, a social worker from Pittsburg, N.H. "They're undecided."

Voters are saying that, as in past years, they won't make up their minds until they cast their votes at Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses or enter the voting booth five days later in New Hampshire.

Adding to the volatility are the rules in both states — New Hampshire lets independents vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary, and Iowa's Democratic caucus rules often prod participants to change to second or third choices.

As a result, Dennis Goldford, professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines, summed up the mood with four terse words: "The races are fluid."

The factors in play?  Electability.  A very large group of independents.  And a uniform dislike of the media's coverage of the campaigns. 

They want to know about issues, and so far see, and are unhappy with, a lot of coverage of the election as sport — full of up and down polls and who's got the best tactics.

A study last month by two journalism organizations found that in the early months of the campaign, sixty-three percent of campaign stories in major media outlets discussed political and tactical aspects of the campaign — and only 17 percent examined candidates' ideas or policy proposals.

One percent focused on candidates' records or past performance, according to the data compiled by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

But a Pew Research Center survey found that 77 percent of those it surveyed in late September said they wanted more coverage of issues.

Of course, as we know, the media know better than we do what we want to know.  Right?