Most of the February 5th states have been polled at least once. Many of the polls include non-candidates or are too old to be represenative, but the information's there. So far as I can see, geography makes relatively little difference.

When are these states going to be voting in Dec.

IA moves to Jan. 7th that is when early voting starts in CA.

hOW CAN DELEGATES BE ALLOCATED BEFORE VOTING ENDS?

I agree with some of that. Edwards is in danger of no longer being a viable candidate. That will make fundraising even harder than it already is. I think some of his trial lawyer money will go to Clinton.

gmafb, you realize that Kerry was broke in Sept, and loaned $5M to his campaign and won with that amount?

You get over $5M, and it's enough to win the first states... the difference between having $5M and having $20M for Iowa is next to nothing.

These early numbers are soft. Mystery pollster say's all pollsters should ask how firmly committed are you to your candidate.

What they found in a NH poll only 9% WERE FIRMLY COMMITTED TO THEIR CANDIDATE AND 78% of Democrats, 87$ of Republicans AND 87% of Independents indicate that they could change their mind on who they will support.

Thompson looks good on paper, but there's little evidence to suggest he's capable of running a good campaign, much less one as dirty as this Republican primary will be.

Whereas Romney may be a Mormon flip-flopper, but he's come down on the right side in the end.

I can see Thompson dominating in the south due to cultural absolutism, but I think otherwise it'll be a Giuliani-Romney contest, with Giuliani weak outside the northeast and the west coast.

Florida has a lot of New York retirees. I don't see Guiliani's lead there as indicative of the rest of the South. My bet is that they love Thompson. Anglo-Saxon name, Fatherly look, not from New York...

I think this race in IA is wide open and I think Obama IS PLAYING HIS CARDS just right.

Polling that has been done on a two person race shows that Clinton increases her lead if Edwards drops out (or no longer is viable and written off by the press). The older voters that Edwards attracts are more likely to go to Clinton than Obama. Clinton currently has a wide lead among older voters anyway and it would probably add a few more points to her numbers.

 As bad a candidate as she is at so many levels, the reality remains that Clinton laps the field among low-information, personality-cult voters -- and there are many, many more of those in the Democratic Party than we'd care to admit.

 Obama's not really trying to beat her. Edwards is, but the power structure is arraying its forces against him -- he'll need to be FDR to overcome that.

 I think it's going to come down to Gore. If he enters, all bets are off. If he doesn't, get ready for yet another hold-our-noses candidate from the Dem side...

I assume thats what Edwards is doing. Probably because thats what all campaigns do...

If he doesn't win Iowa, narrative will kill him. Polling second in a lot of states beforehand won't help him, as the bounce from Iowa and NH will negate that.

He needs some strength in later states, but to a certain extent his campaign is going for the cheaper option - win Iowa, get a bounce into NH, try to take at least two early states and be second on February 6th, then take down whoever the front-runner is.

He has neither the stature nor the money to be in front (or probably even second) nationwide prior to Iowa.

Edwards is clinging to mid-20's in Iowa. He's getting annihilated in NH and SC. Some polls show him doing ok in FL, but nobody has really spent much time there yet.

Given the sequence at this point, where is Edwards supposed to slingshot into? If he wins Iowa, it won't even generate that much momentum, because Edwards has practically lived there since 2003. And if he doesn't, he's dead.

Edwards does not have the money to do that in many states. At one time there was talk that SC might be his firewall but it is in such a weak third there now I doubt that is possible. I think he needs a new strategy.

I agree, and your point holds true for all candidates... winning Iowa, and only Iowa, means nothing -- otherwise, Dick Gephardt would have been president and Tom Vilsack would still be in the race.  

Having never lived in one of the early primary states, I can't comment from past experience, but I wonder how often NH people change their votes and/or make their final decisions based on the perceived momentum from Iowa, SC people based on IA & NH, etc. (well, at least in the recent past, there's no etc., as it's basically been over by SC)

I agree. Some people just don't understand, that if a candidate doesn't WIN in Iowa, then he/she becomes a loser in the first race. Once tagged a loser, it's hard to recover from that.

Turnout for the Iowa caucuses tends to be pretty tiny. As a percentage of the voting age population (VAP), you're talking single digits. Caucuses are all-day affairs -- held in the dead of winter Iowa's case -- where people have to be there from beginning to end to be counted. So it's not like just showing up to vote. You have to really want to participate.

Nationwide, turn-outs for primary elections also tend to be relatively small in terms of the VAP. Something on the order of 20-30% is probably fairly typical on average, if memory serves. But remember that not all states have open primaries. In places where only registered party members can vote, you're basically eliminating a third to one half of the voter base right off the bat. Then of course, all the same structural provisions that help boost turn-out for regular elections also affect primaries, such as same-day registration, early voting and vote by mail; as can extraneous factors such as a hotly contested governor or senate race. Turnout for one party or the other will also tend to be lower if the head of the ticket is running unopposed, as sitting presidents typically do.

So it's a pretty mixed bag and turnout can vary widely by state-by-state and by year-by-year as a result. It's probably a reasonable assumption that primary election turnout and caucus attendance might tend to be higher in the earlier primary states, as interest in the elections tends to drop off in general once the race is perceived as decided. But you might find that a little difficult to prove in practice.

At this stage of the race, before the campaigns have really begun in earnest and the general public not really paying much attention yet, all polls are really measuring is press coverage and name recognition. My guess is that Romney and Thompson probably benefit greatly from being least known among the most talked about -- i.e., from being guys people have heard of but not the guys they already know they don't like. It's easier to project your own ideals onto people who are vaguely defined. They're both pretty photogenic also (if not very tall in Romney's case) which frankly never hurts. I even hear they both smell pretty good... (oh gawd, it's going to be a long year).