Huckabee in First

In Iowa? Well, yes, he is in a tie for first with Romney there, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Have you seen the Rasmussen daily national tracking poll lately?

Here are the post-Thanksgiving polls:

Republican Candidates
Date	Giuliani	Huckabee	Thompson	Romney	McCain
12/05/07	17%	20%	10%	13%	13%
12/04/07	18%	18%	13%	12%	14%
12/03/07	20%	17%	14%	11%	13%
12/02/07	22%	17%	14%	11%	14%
12/01/07	24%	15%	14%	10%	13%
11/30/07	27%	13%	12%	13%	13%
11/29/07	27%	12%	10%	14%	14%
11/28/07	24%	12%	11%	15%	14%
11/27/07	23%	13%	12%	15%	12%

As you can see, Huckabee has be surging nationally at Giuliani's expense (and Thompson and Romney's to a lesser extent).

No other national poll has Huckabee leading, yet, but Rasmussen uses a tighter voter screen that tends to be more accurate and to lead the other polls by a couple of weeks in predicting trends.

Two recent polls (LA Times/Bloomberg and USA Today/Gallup) have Huckabee in 2nd nationally, trailing Giuliani 23-17 and 25-16, respectively. Just days after McCain surged back into 2nd in the Real Clear Politics national poll average (passing Thompson), these two polls helped Huckabee overtake him.

At the very least, the national picture is a Rudy-Huckabee tie.

If I see a poll with Huckabee in first in South Carolina, I'll have to drop my long-standing conviction that Romney would be the GOP nominee.

I've decided to include an average of the last 5 Rasmussen daily trackers with the poll averages in the margin. These are not RCP averages-they use every national poll-but I have a lot of respect for Rasmussen and tend to believe their polls until I see at least three others than contradict them.