By MIKE SILVERMAN
AP senior managing editor

Take a deep breath. Christmas gave way to the most intense burst of presidential campaigning in modern history.

The initial epicenter is in Iowa, which convenes its quirky caucuses just two days after New Year's. In the following month, an unprecedented 30 states will vote. When the dust settles after Feb. 5, we may have one or both nominees.   

Our goal is to help your readers understand a campaign that is unfolding at breakneck speed. We have created a vehicle for the day's events called 2008 Race Rundown. It is a readable, "chunky" treatment of four or five news items plus a quote of the day and a stat of the day.

This gives reporters more time to focus on enterprise, analyses and stories that help readers understand the issues and the candidates. We write regular Fact Checks and Ad Watches to hold the candidates' feet to the fire. We keep a sharp eye on campaign ads and financial contributions, watching for irregularities like clusters of poor immigrants giving to Sen. Hillary Clinton. Our issues checkboard is called Where They Stand, and we write regular stories analyzing the positions of candidates on issues ranging from Social Security to Iran. These are rarely just text stories. We coordinate with video, graphics and photos to produce packages for your Web sites, too.

We've tapped all corners of the AP, enlisting reporters from Springfield, Ill., to delve into Barack Obama's record as a state legislator and reporters in Texas and New York to explore Rudy Giuliani's business dealings.

We are producing some fun items, too. We did a second round of the immensely popular Personal Side, which asks questions of the candidates that may be more revealing than their position papers – like "What food do you hate?" (Giuliani=liver, Obama=beets) or "What is your prized possession?" (Thompson=my trophy wife). We also aim for a lighter item called Political Play of the Day, a telling moment that hopefully has video or photos to go with it, like John McCain doing a tongue-in-cheek fashion critique of a voter dressed in shades of neon.   

We are partnering with Yahoo! on a yearlong survey of more than 2,000 voters, charting their attitudes about the candidates and issues and concerns as the campaign unfolds. In addition to the stories, we will provide a by-the-numbers glance, and you can see the questionnaires at http://news.yahoo.com/polls and at http://surveys.ap.org.

We will produce monthly AP polls of registered voters.

When the voting begins, you can take AP's vote count to the bank. We've been doing it since 1848. Our vote count unit will collect, tabulate and report returns from 5,000 localities and deliver them to you by satellite or online. On Nov. 4, we'll count votes on about 6,500 races, from president to state legislatures. We'll also use exit polls to help us call top-of-the-ticket races, as well as explain why people voted the way they did.

Once each party chooses a nominee, the campaign pace will ease and we'll use that time to produce stories that are more in-depth and investigative. We'll describe what kind of president each would be, both in style and policy. We will spend some time with the voters to better illustrate issues, including a showcase anchored in Ohio about the economy. We will keep a sharp eye out for the next Swift Boat and report on the tax-exempt groups that produce those attacks with unreported money.

At the political conventions, we'll focus on the overview and analytical stories that have proved popular. At least one nominee is likely to be historic – first woman, first black, first Hispanic, first Mormon, pick your "first" – and we will report accordingly on that phenomenon.

We also have a handsome array of multimedia offerings available as a premium product called Campaign Plus. Call your AP bureau chief for more information.