Morning polls: Romney continues his New Hampshire slide, and Oklahoma appears competitive!

• As long as he wins Iowa...

Zogby came out with a primary poll from Hew Hampshire, and the results confirm that Romney's once mighty New Hampshire lead has been reduced to oblivion. The ARG poll from a few days ago had Romney only up 4%, and he does even worse here:

• He leads with 24%, 3 points above Giuliani's 21% (the last Zogby poll had a 35-19 spread). McCain comes third at 16%, and Thompson is very weak (just like in the ARG poll) at 7%.

New Hampshire is becoming a three-way race, which means that the McCain campaign is not dead after all: A strong showing in New Hampshire could be enough to salvage his campaign and keep him going, especially with Michigan coming up, one of McCain's best states. (Though keep in mind the NYT's analysis from yesterday that independent voters, who can vote in either the GOP or Democratic primary, and who massively voted for McCain in 2000, will probably choose to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary this time, depriving McCain of a key constituency).

• Can Oklahoma possibly be competitive?

When I first saw that today's SUSA poll was coming from Oklahoma, I thought it was a waste of a poll. An extremely red state, OK gave itself to Bush last time around with 66% to 34% for Kerry. But then I saw these numbers:

• Clinton loses two match ups by single-digits: She trails Giuliani 47-44, well within the margin of error, and tops Thompson 50-44. Hillary wins against Romney 47-44.
• Obama, on the other hand, does really poorly: Giuliani wins by 19% (54-33), Thompson by 20 (55-35), and Romney only by 6 (46-40). Keep in mind, though, that all these margins are under the 2004 one.
• And Edwards's number are stunning: The Democrat wins all his match-ups in this reddest of states. He beats Giuliani by a lop-sided 9 points (49-40), Thompson by 6% (47-41) and Romney by 17 (53-35).

Who knew that 53% of Oklahoma voters would be willing to vote for a Democrat for president, even if they don't know his Republican competitor (Romney clearly suffers from name ID deficit). Can Obama's weakness also be explained by his name ID? Or is it a factor of race? A Democrat has no need to carry Oklahoma to win the White House, but forcing Republicans to spend money here would be truly a spectacular achievement.

Edwards's strength in this red state confirms earlier SUSA polls from the MidWest or Deep South in which Edwards beat Republicans in completely unexpected ways. Check out the past polls in: Alabama, Kentucky , Ohio, Missouri...

• Clinton crosses 50% nationally

I am not planning on reporting every national primary poll, given how meaningless those numbers are in determining who is up, and who is down, but the new Washington Post-ABC poll does find something very important: Clinton has for the first time crossed the threshold of 50% nationally. She now comes in at 53%, followed far behind by Obama with 20% and Edwards at 13%.

This means that there is no "anti-Hillary" majority as many had hoped. Even if a candidate were to coalesce every element of the party suspicious of Hillary, they would have to fight the odds. This speaks to the amazing success of the Clinton campaign, who started off as a favorite but managed to expand her lead, even as Obama was improving his name recognition and refining his attacks against her.

• Giuliani has a chance in New York

Last but not certainly not least, Quinnipiac released a poll from New York State. The results are very much in line with what SUSA found a few days ago, namely that Rudy Giuliani would make this a huge headache for Democrats if he were the nominee, except if the Democrat is Hillary Clinton:

• Clinton beats Giuliani 52-41, but Giuliani ties Obama 45-45 and (just as in SUSA) beats Edwards 45-41.
• All three Democrats easily beat the other Republicans. McCain is defeated 54-37, 47-39 and 48-37 by Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, and Thompson does worse: 58-30, 53-29, and 55-28. So does Romney: 59-30, 54-28, 57-24.
  
• Also, Clinton has a great favorability rating in the state: 58-37.

Democrats cannot hope to get in the White House without winning New York. Notice that the McCain-Obama contest is also within single-digits. This is a problem they will have to resolve if it ends up being Giuliani versus a Democrat who's name is not Clinton.