Bumped from the diaries -- Jonathan... The poll has a fairly high margin of error among Democrats (+/- 5.65%), so it's not entirely clear that the movement in the poll is not merely statistical noise. That said, this is the fifth poll within the last month to have shown Clinton's lead shrinking (though within the margin of error in each poll), so perhaps there is a trend in there after all.

Suffolk University is out with a New Hampshire Poll which is as follows:

Candidate	Nov 25-27	June 20 - 24	Nov Average	Oct Average
Clinton	34	37	35.6	41
Obama	22	19	22.83	21.75
Edwards	15	9	13.5	12.5
Richardson	9	9	8.5	6.5
Biden	2	2	n/a	n/a
Kuchinich	3	5	n/a	n/a
Dodd	1	2	n/a	n/a

Update [2007-11-28 17:38:32 by Todd Beeton]: One quick thing to add, I think it's notable that this is the first poll out of New Hampshire since the week's worth of extremely favorable media coverage Obama got in the wake of the ABC news/WaPo Iowa poll. It's clear from this poll at least that Obama has received no perceivable bump as a result of that coverage.

I am working on a major update to my previous work on primary polling.  It's taking me a while to get the data put together, but I thought I would share a table I put together this morning.
The table below is shows the largest leads that front runners have in prior years:

Rassmussen is out with a new NH Poll:

Hillary Clinton  34%
Barack Obama  24%
John Edwards  15%
Bill Richardson  8%
Dennis Kucinich  2%
Some other candidate  7%

There is significant evidence that the debate has hurt Hillary.  Her favourability rating is down 9 points (now 72 from 81).  34% is also the lowest number Hillary has had in NH from Rassmussen.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c ontent/politics/election_2008__1/2008_pr esidential_election/new_hampshire/electi on_2008_new_hampshire_democratic_primary

"We hope that opponents of the war in Congress will listen carefully to the evidence that the U.S. military is at last making real and significant progress in its offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq."

John McCain and Joe Lieberman, Today's Wall Street Journal

"More Iraqis say security in their local area has gotten worse in the last six months than say it's gotten better, 31 percent to 24 percent, with the rest reporting no change. Far more, six in 10, say security in the country overall has worsened since the surge began, while just one in 10 sees improvement. "

 Poll of Iraqis done by ABC news

A few of the eleven lessons of Vietnam , from the architect of the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara:

*We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience ... We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
*Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders"

"MONDALE LEAD OVER NEAREST RIVAL IN POLL SETS NONINCUMBENT RECORD"

NYT front page story, February 28th, 1984

"Hart leads Mondale 38-31"
CBS NYT Poll, March 5th -8th 1984

I have been following politics for over 25 years.  In that time I have been consistently amazed at how few people actually understand how the nomination process works.   What this diary is going to demonstrate is that National Polls are mostly meaningless.  It's going to do this by reviewing the last 30 years of primary history.  

And at the end of this diary you should ask why people get paid to write detailed analysis of meaningless national polls

In late 2003 the Kerry campaign made a radical decision: it decided to close most of its New Hampshire campaign and bet everything on Iowa.  It's not an often discussed decision, but it remains the best tactical decision I have ever seen a campaign make during the primaries.  It was based on the fact that national polling is irrelevent before Iowa, and to some extent so is New Hampsire Polling

What made the decision fascinating at the time is that Kerry's campaign manager was Jeanne Shaheen.  While best known as a governor of NH, she is also without a doubt the master of the New Hampshire primary.  She has run 3 winning NH campaigns: Carter in '76, Hart in '84 (where I met her) and Gore in '00.  Obviously two of those races (Carter and Hart) represent some of the biggest upsets in recent political history.

What Shaheen knew was that Iowa would completely re-make the NH race.  And so it did.  The tables below show the polling taken before the Iowa results were known, and the impact Iowa had on the final New Hampshire results:

Over the last few weeks a current refrain has been repeated over and over again: the GOP GOTV organization is a well oiled machine.  Don't trust the polls because of the GOP GOTV.

This is a prime example of Conventional Wisdom in operation.  Something gets repeated over and over again until people blindly accept its truth.

So let's question it.

So the President indicated yesterday that a critical component of his selection of Harriet Miers was her religion.

The Constitution is quite clear about the use religion in appointing federal office holders:

Article IV provides:
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.text.html

During the Roberts nomination, Sens Hatch and Coryn argued that the Senate should not ask questions about his religious beliefs because to do so would violate this provision. (see 7 of this document)
http://www.acslaw.org/pdf/chemerinsky.pdf

By the same standard, Bush violated this provision by making the same inquiry into Miers beliefs.