The Polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida, and South Carolina

After such a lengthy post about the national polls yesterday, I decided to wait a day to do the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, and take a look at the rest of the country as well.

Iowa-
Last week we saw the RCP average ranking Gingrich 26, Romney 15.8, Paul 13.6, Cain, 12.0, Bachman 7.8, Santorum 4.6, Huntsman 2.0.
Data came from polls conducted by Des Moines Register, NBC/Marist, Insider Advantage, Rasmussen Reports, and The Polling Company, gathered over November 11-30

This week the data comes from completely different sources, and from overlapping dates!

Considering the overlapping dates of this week's polls and last week's polls, I decided to make my own table, only pulling in data that covers November 29-30 (which mind you was nearly 2 weeks ago, and means Cain was still in the picture).

My numbers don't really change anything. But I really didn't like that RCP was combining polls that overlapped before Cain dropped out. My numbers all intersect two days, which theirs did not.
In short, Gingrich has Iowa locked up. Which is why the accusation in stonezine.com yesterday that the Romney camp is telling people to vote for Paul makes absolutely no sense. I didn't make this up (they did).

Why would any candidate want to tell his supporters to vote for someone else in order to avert defeat? If anything, Romney would be doing everything in his power right now to make sure he himself comes in second, and to not let Ron Paul beat him.

One thing is for sure though, the Gingrich team doesn't have the money of the Romney team. (Romney had a fundraiser in New Jersey last night that brought in $1.1 million! It rumored that Gingrich may only have $4 million total in his war chest. (Source: Chicago Tribune) That money won't last long with media buys coming up in more states.

Speaking of other states (that matter more in the long run), let's take a look at New Hampshire.

The only new poll on here is the CNN/Time poll. NBC and Rasmussen were in last week's numbers (along with a few other sources as well). And the CNN/Time poll was also taken over the days that covered the Cain drop. So again, not really indicative of what people are really thinking now. We still have Romney with a significant lead over Gingrich, and the rest of the pack. Last week's numbers, which again, covered most of the same dates, had Romney leading with 16.5. Just goes to show you how little you can trust polling. Drop some data, add some data, and tada! You can change the results!

So let's take our first look at the rest of the country, shall we?
South Carolina (primary to be held January 21, 2012)-

Gingrich is in the lead. And looking back at the polls over the past few months tells us that Cain had a stronghold there until mid-November. That support appears to have gone to Gingrich. It is interesting that Romney really maintains that 20% across the country (as I discussed yesterday). The real fight is going to be for third place between Perry, Paul, and Bachmann.

After South Carolina will be the Florida primary on January 31.

Romney has never had a strong lead in Florida, but up until the end of October, he maintained a fairly steady lead. Then Cain had his short burst of fame, and quick demise. And just like in all of the other states, that support moved over to Gingrich.
It scares me to see that Gingrich line on the graphs skyrocketing up like that. Anyone else remember the last time we saw a skyrocket candidate at the last second?
Let me remind you-

Anything look familiar there? Look at the way the McCain line (brown) just jumps up at the last minute. Remember how we all came to quickly regret McCain? He wasn't a candidate anyone felt strongly about, or wanted to support. (And then there was the Palin disaster... Oy vey. At least we dodged a bullet there.) The Gingrich rise scares me in the same way the McCain rise did. Makes you wonder if Giuliani had cared more about Iowa and New Hampshire, if things would have gone differently?

But if you look at the news today, I'm not the only one wondering if we're about to see another "Giuliani moment" among the candidates?