Another avalanche of presidential primary polls this week, including some interesting results from Iowa and New Hampshire - and good news for Barack Obama in Utah.
Plus: Gallup's editor in chief says Obama can't "close the sale" with Democratic voters, while Republicans just don't like Romney. And that eye-popping ABC/Washington Post poll this week that gave Hillary Clinton outright majority support for the first time: it was a rogue poll and needs to be treated with caution.
Read on over the fold....
Iowampshire polling: Zogby puts Romney narrowly ahead of Giuliani in New Hampshire, 24% to 21%, a surprisingly poor showing by Romney given his position there and the amount of money he is spending on TV ads - but even worse news for Fred Thompson, who is in fourth place with just 7%. A performance that weak come January and Thompson may not make it to February 5. The same poll also gives Hillary Clinton a huge lead (38% to 23%) in the Granite State.
Over in Iowa the Republican race is very tight. Romney leads with 24%, but close behind are Giuliani (16%), Thompson (13%) and Huckabee (13%). McCain trails with 10%. (Note: another poor performance from Thompson, tied for third place. Is he a complete bust? It's looking that way.)
Speaking of New Hampshire: latest polling shows that the Democratic candidate Jeanne Shaheen has a 16 point lead over incumbent Republican senator John Sununu.
Big love in Utah: One brighter spot for Romney is Utah, home of the Mormon church, where he gets 62% in the Republican primary polls. Interestingly, it's also a bright spot for Obama, who polls way ahead of both Clinton and Edwards. Utah votes on February 5 in the big quasi-national primary.
In other news...
A must-read article by Gallup's editor-in-chief Frank Newport in a USA Today blog. Looking at Romney and Obama's inability to move their polling numbers, he has some insightful observations.
On Romney:
Romney has the most negative image at this point of any of the major candidates for president. Our mid-September poll shows him with a 27% favorable and 35% unfavorable rating. That makes Romney the only candidate we tested (including Hillary Clinton) who has a higher unfavorable than favorable rating.
On Obama:
The problem for Obama is 'closing the sale'. Obama is well known, well liked, and his campaign focus has penetrated the minds of Democratic voters. But Democratic voters have not yet moved to the point where they tell a pollster that they are going to vote for him. And that's a significant problem.
Finally, that huge lead for HRC in the ABC/WaPo poll this week. Did she jump 10 percentage points overnight? Since that number (53%) was way above any of her showings in the 65 polls reported this year, the possibility is that this poll was an "outlier" - a rogue poll that shows up every now and then with some startling number that later turn out not to be accurate. These happen from time to time, but if you want an idea of how out of whack that poll was, have a look at this chart from pollster.com: the ABC/WaPo poll is the dot in the top righthand corner, 10 points above the trend line.
