South Carolina is busy messing with the date of their primary, thus potentially causing repercussions for Iowa and New Hampshire. Speculation is that this may even push Iowa into December of this year. Wild. In any case, I thought this would be a good time to note a couple of things of interest in terms of polls.

I’ve been checking up on pollster.com. Their methodology basically composites all the various polls being done to come up with a better trend line than any of the polls individually.

The first interesting thing to look at is the national numbers. These are national polls of who people say they support. On the Republican side Guiliani is leading (but falling) and Fred Thompson is rising quickly behind him. On the Democratic side Hillary is way in the lead and rising slightly. Obama is second but after his original rise is now very flat.

Interesting, but completely and totally irrelevant. Because of course the candidates are not selected by a national primary, but with a bunch of state by state contests which don’t happen all at once like the presidential election, but rather are spread out over a long calendar, but with the early states having a hugely disproportionate influence. In most of the previous election cycles, after the first few states there is a run-away leader and all the rest of the states become mostly irrelevant.

So looking at those states tells more than looking at the national numbers.

Dems first.

Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Florida

Clinton and Edwards are in a dead heat in Iowa right now (although Hillary moving up and Edwards moving down). But in each of the other four Hillary has a commanding lead. Everybody else is way behind. Further behind than the national polls show.

I had really thought myself that Hillary would collapse at some point and one or more of the others would surge. There is of course still plenty of time for that, and an “anybody but Hillary” candidate might yet emerge. But not yet. For now, unless she collapses, Hillary is looking very solid.

The Republicans are actually much more interesting at the moment.

Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Florida

Mitt Romney has a very strong lead in both Iowa and New Hampshire, in spite of being in a weak 4th in the national polls. Giuliani is ahead in Nevada, South Carolina and Florida. But it is close in South Carolina (Fred Thompson is right on his heels) and in Florida he is dropping fast (mostly losing support to Thompson).

This is where the calendar comes in. If there is not much time between Iowa and New Hampshire and the rest then if Romney does indeed commandingly win both, he could get a big bump coming into the next three contests. If Iowa and New Hampshire both move earlier, putting more time before the next batch, then that effect might not be quite as great, but could still be substantial. Which could cause those next contests to be very competitive, which could mean that when we get to “Super Tuesday” on February 5th there are still two or more candidates who are still very much in play. And with as many states in play that day as there are this time, that might mean that coming OUT of super Tuesday there might not still be a clear front runner.

Which could make things very interesting for the rest of the primary season (which usually collapses to a non-event as all support flows to who ever is in the lead, because people like to vote for people who are in the lead because they are “inevitable”). If we are really lucky we might even get to the convention with nobody having enough support to win on the first ballot. But I’m not holding my breath on that one, especially on the Republican side where there may be “winner takes all” effects on the states.

In any case, it might be a fun election season next year.

I really want to see a convention that actually decides a candidate sometime, rather than that always being a given going in. But that is the news junky in me. It probably won’t happen. Of course I said that about the kind of stuff that happened in the 2000 election, and it happened. That was so much fun. If only it had gone all the way to the House. But one can’t have everything.

Back to the primaries though, this post from the pollster.com blog shows a nice chart of the national polls from the year before the Iowa caucuses and at this time last time on the Democratic side Lieberman was in the lead, followed by Dean, Gephardt and Kerry in a three way tie for second. Dean took the lead from Lieberman in September sometime. Kerry didn’t take the lead in the national polls until just weeks before the Iowa Caucus.

So we are of course still very early, and a lot can change. A lot probably WILL change. The dynamics tend to get more and more volatile as the first actual voting approaches.

So we shall see. Someone at work a number of months ago predicted that the 2008 race would be Romney vs Clinton. I sort of pooh poohed that, thinking that in the end neither one of those two would make it. I wasn’t sure who would, but I didn’t think those two would. But they are both very much in play.

So, one more interesting chart… the “Trial Heats” between the 4 top Democrats and the 4 top Republicans. That would be Giuliani, McCain, Romney and Thompson vs Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Gore. (In both cases people who are not officially running but who are rumored to be considering it and who poll well are included… that would be Thompson and Gore.) In any case, this gives us 16 possible match ups.

Only ONE of those 16 has a Republican lead… that would be Giuliani vs Gore. And that combination has very sparse polling data and is very close.

There are SIX that look very close. Giuliani vs Clinton, Giuliani vs Edwards, Giuliani vs Gore, McCain vs Clinton, McCain vs Edwards, McCain vs Gore. All other combinations are clear Democratic wins.

Of course, those are popular vote polls too… and the popular vote also is irrelevant in the general election… only electoral votes matter…

And if we are a long way from the first caucuses and primaries, we are even further from the general election…. and quite a lot can happen in that time.

So this kind of poll watching is probably a complete waste of time. But it is a lot of fun.