Senators Running for President

There’s always talk each cycle about why Senators don’t get elected President.  I’d like to take a few moments to go over that logic, since I think the argument is badly flawed.  First and foremost, let’s list every Presidential election since 1912 (about the time that Senators started getting elected) and note the matchups (order will be R-D-I):
1912: Taft (Inc.) v Wilson (Gov.) v Roosevelt (ex-President)
1916: Hughes (Chief Justice) v Wilson (Inc.)
1920: Harding (Senator) v Cox (Gov.)
1924: Coolidge (Inc.) v Davis (Ambassador) v LaFollette (Sen.)
1928: Hoover (Cabinet) v Smith (Gov.)
1932: Hoover (Inc.) v FDR (Gov.)
1936: Landon (Gov.) v FDR (Inc.)
1940: Wilkie (N/A) v FDR (Inc.)
1944: Dewey (Gov.) v FDR (Inc.)
1948: Dewey (Gov.) v Truman (Inc.) v Thurmond (Gov.) v Wallace (ex-VP)
1952: Eisenhower (Gen.) v Stevenson (Gov.)
1956: Eisenhower (Inc.) v Stevenson (Gov.)
1960: Nixon (VP) v Kennedy (Sen.)
1964: Goldwater (Sen.) v Johnson (Inc.) 
1968: Nixon (Ex-VP) v Humphrey (VP) v Wallace (Gov.)
1972: Nixon (Inc.) v McGovern (Sen.)
1976: Ford (Inc.) v Carter (Gov.)
1980: Reagan (Gov.) v Carter (Inc.) v Anderson (Rep.)
1984: Reagan (Inc.) v Mondale (Ex-VP)
1988: Bush-41 (VP) v Dukakais (Gov.)
1992: Bush-41 (Inc.) v Clinton (Gov.) v Perot (CEO)
1996: Dole (Sen.) v Clinton (Inc.)
2000: Bush-43 (Gov.) v Gore (VP)
2004: Bush-43 (Inc.) v Kerry (Sen.)

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Setting aside third-party/independnt runs (none of which have been successful), we have 48 nominations of major parties between 1912 and 2004.  Of these, Senators have won the following:
GOP-1920
DEM-1960
GOP-1964
DEM-1972
GOP-1996
DEM-2004
Of these, GOP-1920 and DEM-1960 were successful, or 33.3%.

By contrast, Governors have managed 12 non-incumbent nomination:
DEM-1920
DEM-1928
DEM-1932
GOP-1936
GOP-1944
GOP-1948
DEM-1952
DEM-1956
DEM-1976
GOP-1980
DEM-1988
DEM-1992
GOP-2000
Of these 12, five have been successful, or 41.6%.

To compare, incumbent and former Vice Presidents have the following:
GOP-1960
GOP-1968
DEM-1968
DEM-1984
GOP-1988
DEM-2000
2 of 6 successes, or33.3%

And finally, let’s look at incumbent Presidents:
GOP-1912
DEM-1916
GOP-1924
GOP-1932
DEM-1936
DEM-1940
DEM-1944
DEM-1948
GOP-1956
DEM-1964
GOP-1972
GOP-1976
DEM-1980
GOP-1984
GOP-1992
DEM-1996
GOP-2004
Of 17 incumbent nominations, only 4 have been unsuccessful; 12 have been successful, or70.5%.  It should be noted that in three of the four cases of an incumbent not being re-elected (1912, 1976, and 1980), there was a major intra-party fight; also, in both 1932 and 1992, there were much more limited in-party nomination fights.  Also, in cases where an incumbent has been blocked from renomination (as opposed to being term-limited or voluntarily stepping aside), there are really two instances: Truman in ‘52 (DEM) and Johnson in 1968 (DEM).  In both instances, the party nominee lost.

Now, what is the sum of all of this?  Governors have been successful at winning the Presidency, yes, but this is far more closely connected to their propensity for getting the nomination than their individual strengths.  Also, of what I’ll call the weakest candidacies of the last fifty years (GOP-1964, DEM-1972, DEM-1984, DEM-1988, GOP-1992, and GOP-1996), three were Senators, suggesting that being a Senator is not the issue…it’s being a Senator who runs a lousy campaign.  Also, the last four Senatorial nominations (all since Kennedy) were against incumbents; a Senator has never lost an open-seat election since Senators started being elected (while the sample size here is atrociously small, it’s worth noting that a lot of rules get made on rather small sample sizes and then become rather self-fulfilling).

It is also worth noting that in virtually every major nomination contest, at least one Senator has run (I can name a Senator as a serious candidate in every truly contested nomination since 1976 [Reagan v Carter; James Buckley flirted with running but ultimately declined; also note that I set aside the nominal contests against incumbents in most years, though not the Reagan-Ford or Carter-Kennedy contests]), and in some years more than one has run (Simon and Gore in 1988 on the Dem side; Hart, Glenn, Hollings, and Cranston in 1984 on the Dem side; McCain and Thompson [ex-Senator] on the GOP side).

So, in short, I think the “don’t nominate a Senator” rule is badly unfounded.  “Don’t nominate a Senator to run against an incumbent President” makes much more sense to me.

Why is Thompson bouncing back?

Fred Thompson seems to be getting a ‘dead cat bounce’ of sorts.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a dead cat bounce comes when somebody comes back in the polls a bit after hitting a low, and for no particular reason.  Thompson is getting one of these; after hitting 10% in the RCP average, he is now back up to almost 12%, and with no good press to explain it.

The answer can probably be found in Mike Huckabee.  After Rudy, Thompson took the Huckabee surge a few weeks back the worst.  The single worst poll result he managed was 6%, within the margin of error of Ron Paul (who was at 5%).  However, that was ARG, and ARG is about as reliable as a campaign’s own staff when coming up with predictions on who will win.  However, there was another sub-10% result (actually two of them), so there’s a good chance he was at least down at 10%.

Huckabee has recently started cooling off in the polls.  In what is now becoming something akin to a Three Stooges comedy, a Republican challenger rises, hits a ceiling, and falls back down.  The next candidate does the same thing, and so on.  At the same time, Romney and McCain have risen…and Rudy has continued, until RCP flushed some old polls from their rolling average and Rasmussen returned to reality, slumping.

Thompson is also showing signs of life in the Iowa polls…if not on the Iowa campaign trail.  He’ll probably pull off a third-place finish there, some polls indicating McCain the favorite to do so (see my earlier discussion of those polls) notwithstanding.  The same cannot be said for New Hampshire or Michigan, and to use a southern phrase, he’d be a damnfool to even go there.  As much as he blew off New Hampshire’s debate, I actually wonder why he bothered putting his name on the ballot there.  He’s doing almost as badly in Michigan; his support base seems to be limited to Iowa and the South (as well as perhaps some parts of the West; I haven’t seen much either way on that, as he temporarily led in Nevada but that seems to have been exclusive to his time as the main anti-Rudy candidate).  His Iowa poll showing, however, is more a product of Rudy’s collapse than his own great efforts; Rudy’s average is currently in 5th place there, and he’s constantly flirting with Ron Paul’s polling position.

Ultimately, Thompson isn’t doing so well…though if his numbers pick up along with everyone else’s, we may well see five candidates over 15%.  Right now, we’ve got 5 over 11%, and barring “news” (i.e. a Kerry-like upset in Iowa or a Dean-like scream), it’s set to stay that way for a while.

The Other Shoe Drops

A few months ago, John McCain was being declared an ex-candidate. Not so much anymore. ARG (The American Research Group, one of my less-favorite pollsters) came out with a result that confirms some stuff from Rasmussen. Now, a bit of a disclaimer: Rasmussen yields funny results, and so does ARG…but usually when those two are yielding funny results, they’re in opposite directions (Examples: ARG favoring Guliani back in the spring; Rasmussen favoring Huckabee at Guliani’s expense these days). This time, they’re both agreeing on a major bump in Iowa and New Hampshire for John McCain…which has yet to get independent confirmation.

Now, with that said, the Iowa result is exclusive to these two: Ignoring the Quad City Times result as out-of-date, McCain has only showed support over 9% twice: ARG’s 20% and Rasmussen’s 14%. And a poll conducted by Strategic Vision (the GOP-run pollster) at virtually the same time as the Rasmussen poll showed McCain at 8% and Thompson at 16%, while another poll inside of this timeframe by CNN showed both McCain and Thompson at 9%. For reference, Rasmussen and ARG showed Thompson at 8 and 5, respectively. To be perfectly honest, the Iowa results are enough of a jumble that I’m reserving judgment on the polls there. If McCain -does- come in third there, however, that will be an upset in light of his lack of campaigning there (and especially in light of his lousy showing there in 2000, where he got a whopping 5% of the vote…probably his single worst showing of the 2000 season, as well as the only time he came in fifth during that campaign…mainly because he simply didn’t try there).

New Hampshire, on the other hand, has two polls showing a big McCain boost (a McSurge, as it’s being called…which sounds suspiciously like something I’d get at McDonalds alongside an order of McNuggets) and none contradicting them…mainly because nobody else has issued a poll here. Also, the results here are only netting a slight shift when compared to Iowa: All of the McCain polls in the last week are within a 5-point range of eachother (22-27), while the only candidate to face a major outlier Romney, who falters in the ARG poll…just as he’s surging nationally. Here, again, I’m inclined to believe Rasmussen over ARG, as Rasmussen’s conclusion that McCain is closely trailing Romney versus ARG’s tied result just makes a bit more sense.

Ultimately, I do believe that McCain has popped up a good bit in the polls…I just don’t believe that the surge is that big yet. The sudden string of endorsements he recieved over the last few days has helped him out a lot, and I believe that it is reasonable to say that his campaign is coming back strong…even if I don’t believe that he’s in a de facto three-way tie (with Huckabee and Guliani) for the lead.

One interesting thing is Rudy Guliani’s continued trouble in about five different places. Nationally, he’s now in a dogfight with just about everyone else for the lead, depending on which polls you believe; in Iowa, his polling average has gone from third place to fifth place (with one poll even putting him in sixth) and peeled off from the mid-teens to the upper single digits; while in New Hampshire, he’s at least doing something that resembles holding his ground: His average isn’t collapsing there, and though Rasmussen only gave him 13% there…Rasmussen is also the same company that’s giving him 13% nationally while nobody else is giving him less than 20%.

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Update: A new poll came out in NH from the USA Today/Gallup.  It shows McCain at the 26/27 level that Rasmussen and ARG recorded, but shows Romney at 34.  I’ll buy these results, since they make more sense if for no other reason.  So if I had to guess, ARG just pulled two bad polls (which is about par for the course for them) and needs to be ignored until they refine their methodology some more.

Matchups

Some interesting matchups came out from Fox today, and went up on RCP:
McCain v Clinton: McCain 47, Clinton 42, Undec. 12
McCain v Obama: McCain 44, Obama 40, Undec. 17
Huckabee v Clinton: Huckabee 38, Clinton 47, Undec. 15
Huckabee v Obama: Huckabee 35, Obama 44. Uncec. 21

If this set is accurate (there seems to be a split in the Huckabee v Dem matchups; one group shows him on par with McCain and Rudy, while another set shows him lagging them badly in matchups), then we can draw two conclusions:
-Obama makes a lot of people uneasy
-So does Mike Huckabee

Simply put, Huckabee does 9 points worse than McCain in the same circumstances (47-38=9; 44-35=9).  However, Obama simultaneously does 2-3 points worse than Clinton.  Ultimately, this probably means that people are just uncertain about Huck and Obama (Huckabee being a brand-new face to a lot of people, and Obama still having at least slightly worse name recognition than Clinton…and not helped by a few high-profile flubs).  However, it is worth noting that Hillary and Obama both get larger shares of the vote against Huck than against McCain…at least suggesting that there’s something that puts people off about him.

If accurate, this isn’t good for Huckabee.  With that said, however, the polls seem to be split on how well he matches up.  It is also worth noting that Rudy and McCain have generally done better in matchups than have Romney, Thompson, or (now) Huckabee, and that McCain has done better than Rudy much of the time (though those two have often been within a point or two of eachother in matchups).

How much trouble is Rudy in?

Rasmussen gave Rudy Guliani his worst poll showing of the campaign season today, dropping him to 13%.  This is not only his worst daily showing, it’s over 20 points off his best showings back in the spring, when Rasmussen’s weekly averages at several times put him at nearly 40%.  Other polls at the time pegged him at over 40%, with at least two putting him at 44%.  My how times can change.

Truth be told, Rudy’s probably not in as much trouble as a 13% poll rating would indicate.  The reasons are as follows:

1) It’s just Rasmussen.  Nobody else is showing Rudy under 20%, which indicates that Rasmussen is probably an outlier here (and a nasty off-the-reservation outlier at that)

2) Rasmussen has never been particularly friendly to Rudy, as I can recall.  At least since the race grew into a four-way field, either Rasmussen has regularly under-polled Rudy’s strength or everyone else has over-polled it.  I’ll go with the former conclusion.

3) Rasmussen’s dropoff from Rudy hasn’t showed up with anybody else.  Usually, if one candidate loses support another will pick up at least a part of it.  In this case, there have been net drops of 5 (Rudy dropped 3, Huck and Romney 1 each) and only a net gain of 2 by McCain.  Most of this is probably dropped fractions, but with that said it looks like Undecided/Other has gotten a bit of a temporary boost.  Basically, Rudy is dropping in a vacuum in some ways.

So, Rudy doesn’t need to panic based on Rasmussen’s figures.  He’ll have some trouble, but those figures are, at the very least, not a show-stopper.  However, I think it can safely be said that for the first time in thirty two years, we have a Republican Primary contest without a frontrunner, as different polls have now showed every major candidate but Fred Thompson within one point of Rudy Guliani.

Tancredo Out

Tom Tancredo’s apparently dropping out of the race today, apparently.

The man had a reasonable niche he could have filled early on if all the other candidates hadn’t moved to fill it as well, squeezing him out.  That and the shrillness he apparently resonated in the debates probably doomed him.  The fact that his niche was filled early on in the campaign probably doomed him in some ways, as niche candidates, by definition, require a niche to fit into.  Without that, he just couldn’t catch on by rounding up all the Buchananite support.  Ultimately, this will probably have no substantive impact on the race, as his support base was negligible.

And I was rather looking forward to seeing if he’d outpoll Thompson in New Hampshire.

*thinks*

I’m still looking forward to whether or not that happens.

Thoughts on Ron Paul

In what will probably be an ill-advised post, since I expect to gain lots of flames from diehard Paulists, I’m going to share my thoughts on Ron Paul.  First and foremost, what I like:
-He’s a small-government Republican.  I don’t like big government, as a rule, and his opposition to big government at every turn does please me.
-He’s pro-life.  I am, as anyone who knows me will confirm, very opposed to abortion…to the point that if that issue alone isn’t a deal-killer with a candidate, it comes quite close to being one.
-I like his opinion that when we’re getting into a war, we should declare war rather than doing a song-and-dance of it being a ‘police action’ or a ‘conflict’ or something else along those lines.

Now, for what I don’t like:
-I think the Federal Reserve Bank is covered under a (slightly broad in some eyes, perhaps) understanding of the ability of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce.  I also think printing money (versus the right to ‘coin money’) is covered under that as well.  I don’t like the Commerce Clause very much, and I think it should be used as little as possible, but when something has to do with interstate commerce, it’s probably covered under that clause.  And ladies and gentlemen, I do believe that setting interest rates and regulating banking probably falls under interstate commerce.
-His anti-war stance gives me very mixed feelings.  All rhetoric about an American Empire and so forth aside, I’m still in favor of making sure that we finish what we started.  I like the letters of marquee idea that one of Paul’s supporters floated, at least in principle (that principle still has its place, I think, especially within certain contexts), but it strikes me that we’ve still got to do a bit of the heavy lifting ourselves.  Still, I’ll confess that the inclusion of that solution does mollify some of my concerns, and it is one of the ideas that doesn’t get articulated very well.
-I’m not thrilled with his stance on civil unions (if I understand it correctly).

There are probably a few other points I disagree with him on, but let me sum up my opinion of Dr. Paul like this: I want him to have an influence on the GOP, especially with respect to the party’s stance on pork and on taxes.  Those places are where I tend to agree with him over some flanks of the party.  I don’t necessarily want him running the foreign policy of the US, though I wouldn’t mind seeing the letters of marquee put into practice and seeing where that goes.  I hate to speak prematurely, but surely it can’t go much worse than some of the situations with Blackwater have.  So, in short, I think the good doctor is a good influence on the party, and I think he can help the party attract a new segment of the population (something you’re not getting from all of the candidates out there), but I don’t see him as the strongest nominee.

And now, chaos…

One poll does not a pattern make. However, when as many as three polls are coming out every day in Iowa, and the pace is similarly fast for New Hampshire and South Carolina (Michigan avoiding this fate largely because of the Democratic boycott), it’s fair to say that you can get at least a decent snapshot of the race at any given moment.

Even more amazing is the deluge of national polls. There, we’ve had five polls this week (since Monday), not counting the daily Rasmussen tracking poll. They’re all saying variations of the same thing…but those variations are both interesting and important. Let’s go over what they’re collectively saying:

-Huckabee recorded his first non-Rasmussen lead. However, he did this in an out-of-date poll (seven days on a non-refrigerated shelf kills milk and polling data in this race; when this one came out, there were 4 more recent polls and one simultaneous one out already). He also managed to show up in third for the first time in a while, which is also worth noting.
-Mitt Romney has now tied for the lead in at least one poll. More importantly, this poll also bounced Huckabee into third as a result, and Romney tied with Rudy.
-Rudy Guliani, with the exception of Rasmussen and the Battleground poll, is keeping Huckabee out of the lead. In some ways, this is a psychological win for Rudy; crashing into second (or, heaven forbid, third) overall would probably cause the wheels on his campaign to come flying off.
-John McCain’s national revival seems to be going well. With one odd exception, he’s pulling at least 10% everywhere, and only one other poll puts him under 12.
-And Fred Thompson can at least brag about having apparently bounced off of the 10% mark and come back just a tad. To paraphrase Monty Python, “He’s not dead yet!”

Iowa and New Hampshire are revealing major jumbles:
-In Iowa, Huckabee is no longer the absolute frontrunner, but he mantains a distinct edge. The situation further down the pack, in the meantime, is an absurd four-way tie for third, as John McCain, Rudy Guliani, Fred Thompson, and Ron Paul fight over that position. Thompson can still claim an edge for that coveted slot, but it’s very nominal; in an ironic twist, Rudy may be in third..or fourth…or fifth…or sixth.
-New Hampshire at least has a bit of order to its polling. With one exception, all the polls are Romney-McCain-Guliani-Huckabee-Paul-Thompson. The only oddball simply swaps McCain and Guliani, but by an insignificant margin. However, even here there’s a bit of a problem: McCain seems to be edging up on Romney (Joe Lieberman’s endorsement seems to be helping…not to mention two big NH papers). And even more important than the poll order here alone is the nature of the overall jumble.

Taken together, this is a recipie for chaos. As I said earlier, everybody but Romney is set to take at least one embarassing lump. Thompson -will- take it in New Hampshire, where it is safe to say he will not come in better than fifth, and he might even manage to come in seventh or eighth. Huckabee is in a similarly bad situation in New Hampshire; a win in Iowa followed by a fourth place in NH is what one would call a mixed bag, though if he effectively skips NH after IA, that might well be avoided. By contrast, McCain would seem to be headed for his embarassment in Iowa…though if the bump he’s seeing holds, that might not be the case. If he manages third in Iowa, that’s effectively a win since he’d be edging out both Rudy and Thompson, who have put far more time, energy, and money (or at least time and money in Thompson’s case; he doesn’t seem to have much energy to spend anywhere).

Rudy, in the meantime, is headed for double embarassments (a possible fifth or sixth place in IA and a third in NH do not make for a good time), while Romney may get some pie in his face in either place: Second in IA is survivable (if irritating), but second in NH probably isn’t.

Who’s the winner of all this confusion at the moment? Ron Paul, who may have the pleasure of upstaging as much as half the field in IA and NH if this keeps up, is gaining from the confusion (even a fourth place in IA can turn into a “win” under the right conditions), but John McCain isn’t doing too badly, either, and his campaign seems to have upward momentum, while Romney is coming through the chaos in one piece. The losers? Huckabee, who’s now stalled, Rudy, who’s suddenly stuck in with the field he was leading for nearly a year, and Fred Thompson, who might well be out after Iowa if this keeps up…and even if he survives there, might suffer even more humiliation in New Hampshire if Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, or even one of the perennial candidates manage to outrun him in the results.

Looks like a rule will die this year…

Traditionally it has been held that one needs to come in at least third in Iowa and at least second in New Hampshire in order to win a party’s nomination.  This has been the case since 1972, but it looks like that rule is going to die on the Republican side this time around.

The general polling order in Iowa has been, for the last few weeks, as follows:

Huckabee in first place, by varying degrees.
Romney in second, generally not too far behind (though this may be about to change).
Thompson, McCain, Rudy, and Paul in various permutations of third through sixth (usually Thompson and Rudy take third and fourth, but a Rasmussen poll showed McCain in third.  I don’t buy it just yet, but it’s at least believable; Rudy’s also dropped into sixth at least once).

New Hampshire, on the other hand:
Romney in first, universally.
McCain in second, also pretty much universally, some ties not withstanding.
Rudy in third unless he’s tying with McCain (something that’s not happening much anymore as McCain builds a lead on him).
Paul and Huckabee jockeying for fourth.
And Fred Thompson polling within the margin of error of 0.

If the patterns that we’ve seen hold, then the following will result:
Iowa “winnows in” Romney, Huckabee, and Thompson.
NH “winnows in” McCain and Romney.
Rudy is left in the cold, but in a survivable position.  Nobody is eliminated.

The only “nominatable” candidate under this scenario is Romney; if McCain edges Romney out in NH, this still holds…but second in NH is also close to a deal-killer for him.  Which would leave us with five candidates, all rejected by IA or NH, and the only one they both like knocked out, and almost everybody both benefiting from a good showing in one state and reeling from a lousy show in the other.

Huckabee Stalled…

For the last few weeks, we’ve been treated to a rather big show as the -third- significant underdog in the GOP race to make a surge did so. First there was Thompson, who was in second place without actually getting in. Then there was Mitt Romney, who bounced into third on the heels of a win in the Ames Straw Poll. Then there was Thompson again, who finally got in, came within a few inches of the lead (Rasmussen gave him a lead in his tracking poll, but I don’t buy that…he was close, but he wasn’t quite there). Then Fred fizzled a few weeks after getting as his campaign was so laid back he was almost falling out of his chair in the process (a few debate performances helped, but not enough to have him any better than fifth in many polls now…or in the RCP average, which is something akin to the S&P 500 for polls). Thompson held onto second place for most of the fall, but in the end he faltered as well, dropping down to about where he was back in the spring when his name first started circulating.

Huckabee managed an impressive surge in the last few weeks. Up until Thanksgiving, he was looking like the fourth candidate to pile onto the ‘tied for second’ bandwagon: Reaching 10% in the polls, he was making for a messy tie, and he looked pretty good to pulling-their-hair-out conservatives. He shot off, running from 10% in the RCP average to over 20%, took leads in IA, SC, and (apparently) FL, and looked like he might be able to at least get into a straight fight with Rudy, if not take the nomination outright.

It’s probably telling that he’s in third in the electronic markets despite being in second in the polls. His run-up in IA pumped his expectations up; suddenly, instead of a close second in IA being good, he’s gotta win it, and probably win it pretty big, to avoid disappointing. Ultimately, a bunch of baggage caught up with him; presumably it was on a trip to Abu Dhabi along with Nermal (for those of you who like Garfield) and only now got cleared through airport security.

Right now, he’s probably wishing that it had been impounded, but the Paulists (ie Ron Paul supporters) saw to it that it wouldn’t be, airing the dirty laundry starting in early December (my first exposure to it came at the Republican Advance in VA). So he’s stalled, and polls which at one point were showing him up by as much as 22 points in IA are now cooling off.

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So, let’s apply the three principles I outlined in my last post to the Iowa polls of the last few weeks. From Real Clear Politics, we have the following in IA, courtesy of Real Clear Politics:

Poll	Date	Huckabee	Romney	Thompson	Giuliani	McCain	Paul	Spread
RCP Average	12/07 – 12/17	32.2	24.2	9.8	8.8	6.0	5.8	Huckabee +8.0
InsiderAdvantage	12/16 – 12/17	25	28	11	5	7	6	Romney +3.0
Quad City Times	12/10 – 12/13	31	22	9	9	7	7	Huckabee +9.0
Hotline/FD	12/07 – 12/12	36	23	8	12	5	5	Huckabee +13.0
Rasmussen	12/10 – 12/10	39	23	8	8	6	5	Huckabee +16.0
Strategic Vision (R)	12/08 – 12/10	30	25	13	10	5	4	Huckabee +5.0
Newsweek	12/05 – 12/06	39	17	10	9	6	8	Huckabee +22.0
Mason-Dixon	12/03 – 12/06	32	20	11	5	7	2	Huckabee +12.0
Strategic Vision (R)	11/30 – 12/02	27	24	11	13	6	5	Huckabee +3.0
Zogby	11/29 – 12/01	25	26	8	12	5	5	Romney +1.0
American Res. Group	11/26 – 11/29	27	28	14	9	9	3	Romney +1.0

Table from Real Clear Politics, with an edit to insert the Ron Paul results from SV’s Dec. 8-10 poll.

First of all, where is the consensus? Currently, RCP puts the average at Huckabee by 8 over Romney. This is off quite a bit because of the dropping of an extremely Huck-friendly poll (Newsweek, which had Romney at 17…his lowest poll result in IA since May) and the inclusion of the first one to show
Huckabee out of the lead in about two weeks (and change). I’d peg the consensus at about a lead of 11 for Huckabee, possibly12.

Now that we’ve identified the consensus, who is close to this? The answer: Quad City Times (Huckabee+9), Hotline/FD (+13), and Rasmussen
(+16). Who’s out of line? Insider Advantage (Romney +3) and Strategic Vision (Huckabee +5). Going older, Newsweek is -way- off, while Mason-Dixon is in the ballpark…and I think that the two older polls are before the surge entered its recent phase (Huck had been climbing for about a month following some good debate performances and good press). But when seven polls show such a wide variety of opinion, something has to be up.

First of all, I suspect we have a case of one wonky poll with Newsweek. I’m inclined to throw them out because they’re so far away from their nearest neighbor. The same can be said of Romney’s lead in the other poll there. Neither makes too much sense, and with Iowa sampling as tricky as it is, both polls get tossed out in my mind. They’re between 3 and 5 standard deviations from the “consensus” here, making both suspect.
Second, Rasmussen might be off…he’s generally kinder to the right-wing candidates (Thompson and Huckabee), so that might be at work here. However, he’s within the consensus this time, and due to Iowa’s odd nature (and the fact that you’ve got to be willing to put in some serious time and energy to vote in the IA caucuses) he’s probably within the ballpark…and he’s probably within the MoE of the consensus for when he was polling.

Third, Strategic Vision. The pair of polls here are intriguing in that they show -zero- movement for Romney between the two polls, and drop the shift in support to Huck on the head of Rudy. That’s an odd way for traffic to flow, but given that the latest poll puts Rudy in sixth and the fact that Rudy has had his own set of trouble lately…not unbelievable. What’s more likely there is complex inter-candidate traffic that’s hard to follow (say voters move from Rudy to Romney while others move from Romney to Thompson…and a few more move from Thompson to Huckabee…while some just skip Thompson…you get the idea). My inclination here, though, is that SV’s botched its second poll there with a bad sample.

Ignoring SV’s poll, then, what have we? A surge, a peak, and a slow downtrend. Huckabee was never up by 22, and he’s not down by 3 (yet), either. But his surge, effectively an announcement boost (as has been noted elsewhere), has stopped. This has borne out in the national polls (where he’s stipped rising after that impressive jump…and started trending downwards in the polls, too, after peaking at just over 20% in the RCP average) as well as in Iowa. In short, Huckabee’s surge is over, and if he bleeds off a few more points, then we’re back to where we were a month ago…with another candidate piled onto the horde.

Ahh, the joys of when everyone’s ready for prime time…