Morning polls from New England, with a fundraising twist

Hillary Clinton just released her fundraising totals for the third quarter. She posted an impressive 22 million dollars in primary funds alone ($27 million if we include money she can only use in the general election). And while that is a very solid sum, it does not amount to a significant difference with the also-massive $19 million Obama raised.

Yet, it is a testament to how disciplined Clinton's campaign is that they played a great expectations game. By repeatedly stating that they were on course to raising between $17 million and $20 million in the past week, and then waiting for Obama to announce how much he had raised first yesterday, they provoked a wave of stories saying that "Clinton would tie Obama at best" and that Obama had once again stunned conventional wisdom by outraising Clinton. And when her campaign announced her $22 million today, it was immediately picked-up by the media as a surprise showing that humiliates Obama! Even the Drudge Report picked up that theme.

For all practical purposes, Clinton and Obama will have roughly the same amount of money to use through the primaries, and neither will have any problem running a full national campaign once February comes around. Edwards raised about $7 million, but his decision to accept matching funds allows him to compete on equal grounds with the two frontrunners, at least through January. The other big story out of this fundraising is the now routine fact that Democrats have crushed Republicans in fundraising. Romney is about to announce he banked about $10-12 million, and he is likely to be the highest-grossing Republican.

With that said, let's go on to this morning's polls, namely two general election surveys from New England states, Connecticut and Massachussets. The bottom line: Rudy Giuliani is right that he could make usually Democratic coastal states competitive. Though that doesn't mean he would win them.

• Connecticut could be bluer

Rasmussen matched up the three main Republicans against Hillary Clinton alone:

• Against Thompson and Romney, Hillary leads very comfortably (54-32 and 54-31 respectively).
• But against Giuliani, Clinton's lead is a much paler 46-40.

This still represents a slight improvement since Rasmussen's last CT poll, in which Giuliani and Clinton were tied at 40%. Also, given how much better Clinton is performing in these coastal states than either Obama and Edwards (see yesterday's polls from CA and NY, and today's poll from MA I discuss below), it is very possible that Rasmussen would have found Giuliani leading Obama and Edwards.

• Massachusetts prefers Clinton, but Giuliani lurks in the background

SurveyUSA's quasi-daily poll comes to us today from the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts. The findings are very similar to the ones from New York and California: Giuliani is very competitive against Obama and Edwards, but not against Clinton. And what is most stunning is that this is Romney's home-state, the one he governed for four years, and he does more poorly than even Thompson!

• Clinton crushes Giuliani 59% to 34%. She also beats Thompson 61-32 and Romney 65-31!
  
• But Giuliani is within single-digits against Obama (48-43) and Edwards (48-40).
• Obama and Edwards have no trouble beating Thompson and the state's former governor Romney. Obama leads 53-36 and 57-35 respectively, and Edwards wins 56-31 and 57-32.

These numbers say as much about both Giuliani's potential in coastal states as about how much Massachusetts voters hate Romney.