Rett Hatcher & Company

Daily Tracking Poll…

• Giuliani – 24%
• Thompson – 16%
• Romney – 14%
• Huckabee – 12%
• McCain – 11%

Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As we chart Huckabee’s success in the 2008 contest, it is most useful now to concentrate on his message. It is a positive, inclusive, good-humored one. As Republicans seek to rebuild from their defeat of 2006 and try to stave off a similar loss in 2008, they might study the Book of Huckabee.

“I’m a conservative, but I’m not mean about it,” he tells audiences. He shows up at events with minority groups. His pro-life message also encompasses health care for poor women and a concern for children. His talk about education reform includes developing creative skills through art and music.

He had fun playing the bass guitar in his band at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake – an event that attracted more than 600 people on Friday. A former Baptist pastor, Huckabee peppers his speeches with Scripture and rock-music lyrics.

Unlike some Republican presidential candidates, who grew up in well-to-do families, Huckabee tells audiences his mother grew up in a house with dirt floors, and on his father’s side, he is the first male to graduate from high school. That seems to give him a populist bent – and an understanding for poor people – that isn’t seen in the Ivy League conservatives.

At a time when GOP candidates are falling all over themselves to rekindle the spirit of Ronald Reagan in their party, Huckabee’s coming as close as anyone.

Read the whole ARTICLE by David Yepsen…

Read Jim Geraghty’s thoughts on Polls before the Caucus…

 As we see poll numbers coming out of Iowa this fall, we ought to keep in mind that the final preferences of those six percent or so on caucus night and the leaders in polls conducted in the closing months of the preceding year tend to be distant relations.

For example, on Halloween 2003, a poll conducted for KCCI TV-8 in Des Moines put Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean tied at 26-percent each. John Kerry was third with 15-percent, followed by John Edwards at 8 percent.

A little later…

But while we chuckle at past comments from pollsters calling Dean a “juggernaut” we should note that most pollsters’ results do get closer to the final results in the last days of the campaign. For example, the Iowa Poll, released the day before the caucuses in 2004, found that 26-percent of the 606 Iowans they polled were for Kerry, with Edwards at 23-percent, 20-percent for Dean, and 18-percent for Gephardt.

The final results were Kerry at 38-percent, Edwards at 32-percent, Dean at 18-percent, and 11-percent for Gephardt. Even if the percentages were off (by double digits for Kerry and Edwards!) they did manage to get the order right.

And finally…

“The history of Iowa suggests you’ll see some motion in the numbers in the final months,” McLaughlin says. “Bush fell from 50-to 41-percent; he wasn’t in a position where he’s going to lose his lead, but he lost ground.” He noted that in 1996 there were significant shifts in the last 12 days – Dole gained, and Lamar Alexander and Pat Buchanan rose and passed Steve Forbes. “It’s not so much that the polls we’re seeing right now are inaccurate. It’s that you could see motion within the voters.”

A little insight from William Kristol…

1. Huckabee wins Iowa (or places a very strong second), beating Romney. He then defeats at least Thompson in New Hampshire. Energized social conservatives rally to the real thing for Huckabee’s showdown with Giuliani, as Thompson and Romney fade. Huckabee gets enough money flowing in to compete adequately, and beats Giuliani one-on-one on Feb. 5 and after, winning more delegates than Giuliani by doing better in the delegate-overweighted (because they’ve voted Republican more often recently) Southern states.