Adam Nagourney asks the question in today's New York Times:

What if at the end of Thursday, the three leading Democrats - former Senator John Edwards and Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama - are separated by a percentage point or two, leaving no one with the clear right of delivering a victory speech (or the burden of conceding)? A number of polls going into the final days have suggested that after all of this, the Democratic caucus on Thursday night could end up more or less a tie.

I had this exact argument yesterday with a politically active friend of mine. He made the argument - which everyone has made so often in the past, including me, by the way - that if Hillary ekes out a win in Iowa she has the nomination wrapped up. I said I wasn't so sure: if, as the polls suggest, Hillary beats Obama by a single point, does that automatically restore her "aura of inevitability" heading into New Hampshire, or does Iowa simply become, as Nagourney suggests, a "push?"

I think it's possible we could have a three-way cluster separated by a point or two in which everyone declares victory and moves on. But if there's one reason it won't happen it's this: the media despises "ties." The idea of a "push" is antithetical to how the media operates: there must be winners and losers. There must be storylines of triumph and tragedy, and the media will develop those storylines based not on the final vote count but on whether a candidate "met," "exceeded," or "didn't live up to" expectations. Those expectations have already been set - either by the media or, as Steven just pointed out, by the campaigns themselves - heading into this week's vote.

And so even a vote that may amount to a tie in real terms will have implications in the way it's projected through the media on Friday morning. And with only five days until New Hampshire, if the media narrative is working against you, it'll be a very hard thing to turn around.