The attached graphs show a 6-data-point moving average of head to head matchup polls between the leading Democratic and Republican candidates. The graphs are from the reference point of the Democratic candidate and display trend lines for their matchups against Giuliani and McCain.

The graphs were generated using the polling data from the Wikipedia entry on this topic. Only polls that covered both Giuliani and McCain (which would be most of them) were used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion...neral_election

The following graph shows the overall trend of D vs R.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2008_Polling.jpg

Discussion

I didn't include Romney in this analysis since he's still largely unknown with much of the population and currently matches up very poorly. Note, though, that Obama still has a significant unknown factor (not as high as Romney's) and his numbers are surging, although more people are becoming familiar with him.

Trends since November, 2006 show all Democratic candidates gaining on all Republican candidates, generally between 4 and 12 percentage points.

As discussed in other threads, Clinton vs Giuliani (the leading candidates) is the most favorable for Republicans. Clinton has gained only about 4 points on Giuliani and remains about a point or two behind in the moving average.

Obama and Edwards both have about and 2-point and 6-point lead over Giuliani and McCain respectively. Obama's gains since November, 2006 have been sharp. This can at least partially be attributed to people becoming more familiar with him. I believe that their strength against Republicans may allow Obama and Edwards to close the gap on Clinton in the final months of the primary. In 2003/2004, Dean was leading until the last month. Voters suddenly switched to Kerry, who they felt would do better in the general election than Dean. I expect this to be a competitive primary.

The Edwards graph starts in January 2007 since there were very few polls before then from which to calculate a moving average from.

Attached Images

	edwards_vs.gif (9.2 KB, 2 views)
	clinton_vs.gif (13.5 KB, 4 views)
	obama_vs.gif (9.9 KB, 4 views)

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