Unlikely Voter

Rick Perry had better get fed up fast with his polling situation. As I warned on Tuesday, he’s teetering at the brink of irrelevance.

This is Herman Cain’s moment. The new Fox News poll only confirms the CBS poll.

Why yes, I am ignoring the polling of Iowa. It’s conceivable that the polling is accurate and we’re going to see record turnout at the caucuses on the Republican side, records above and beyond the record turnout seen in 2008. But my assumption is that polling caucuses is hard, especially for polling systems designed to predict elections, not caucuses.

Instead I’m checking in with the first national polling in a week, as CBS brings Herman Cain his best news in a while.

There’s plenty of talk about the Republican CNN debate in Nevada, asking who won and who lost. I’ve enjoyed using the polling to make those determinations, because the debates have tended to swing the numbers. But, to know where the swing is, we have to know where we started.

The new Associated Press/GfK/Roper poll helps tell us just that.

CNN polled the results of its debate, and of course the results had to come out just after I published my latest national polling survey.

Fortunately it changes nothing I said, though. Herman Cain seems to have missed an opportunity to extend a lead, and instead has fallen back close with Mitt Romney.

Before the cold that really took me down since Friday (to explain my silence since), we checked in on the pre-debate polling for Herman Cain’s first debate as a major contender.

It turns out that Cain’s momentum had taken him even further ahead of the Tuesday debate, though post-debate polling suggests he took at hit in the national audience.

With a new debate coming, now’s a great time to check the latest national polling. Of course, individual states matter, but this early the national polling is critical for gauging how well the candidates will be able to stay in the race.

To summarize, we’ve seen no changes since Herman Cain surged just ahead of Rick Perry. Mitt Romney still leads.

I’m not too surprised when I see Herman Cain doing better than Rick Perry in recent polling, but I was surprised to see Ron Paul beating Rick Perry in NBC’s new poll of Iowa. So, I started getting ready to post… and found out there’s more than meets the eye here.

Caucuses are apparently hard to poll.

Two more polls are out that absolutely confirm Cain is a serious force in the Republican Presidential race right now. Quinnipiac and CBS leave no more doubt, as the last four polls have all put Herman Cain at 17%, right up alongside Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

I’m going to try to break down these numbers get a good snapshot of this Cain moment.

First it was one national poll, and we could wait and see. Then it was a pair of state polls, and we could hold on for one more national poll.

But after the new ABC News/Washington Post poll, there’s no denying it. For now we have a three way Republican Presidential race between Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain.

Last week’s shock poll bringing Herman Cain into third place needed confirmation before we could be sure that Cain was a serious contender.

Two new polls of Florida Republicans by SurveyUSA for WFLA and by War Room Logistics seem to provide that confirmation and more: Both put Herman Cain in second in the key early primary state.