For Herman Cain, the path to winning the Iowa caucuses is by continuing to draw strong support from conservative voters, including maintaining his popularity among evangelical voters. I talked to several Iowans about how the sexual harassment allegations could impact his campaign for my homepage piece today:

“If the story continues to develop late and there are elements of truth to it, it’s going to hurt him in Iowa,” says Bob Vander Plaats, who headed Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign in Iowa and currently is president of the Family Leader, a socially conservative activist group. “If he’s able to deflect these allegations as being just a result of somebody gaining public stature and somebody wants to take a shot at him, I think that’s part of the process.” …
“He’s leading the Des Moines Register poll, but if you read the internals on it, he was supported by 37 percent of born-again Christians,” notes Craig Robinson, editor of TheIowaRepublican.com and a former political director of the Iowa GOP. The combination of Cain’s “lack of clarity” on abortion in a series of interviews last month with these allegations jeopardizes his popularity with those voters, Robinson says. “Even the accusation is going to hurt him in Iowa.”

The consensus is that as of what we know right now, there’s no reason to see these charges as destroying — or even gravely damaging — Cain’s chances in Iowa.