Presidential Diary: Why does Steven Colbert draw more votes form Republicans?

• Clinton strong in Wisconsin

SurveyUSA came out with a new poll from Wisconsin today. Wisconsin voted against Bush twice, but by the narrowest of margins. Bush led in the state for much of the campaign in 2004 -- so this is definitely not a sure bet for Democrats next year. But Clinton appears strong for now:

• Clinton only leads McCain by 1% (46-45), this is the closest margin.
• She leads Rudy Giuliani 48% to 41%, Thompson 53% to 41%, Romney 52% to 38%, Huckabee 54% to 35%, and Ron Paul 54% to 33%. The Paul-Clinton match-up is always useful because it provides an idea of the "safe GOP" vote no matter what.
  

Clinton has improved her position since last month's poll -- in which she actually ran a bit better than Obama and Edwards. And once again, we discover with this poll that John McCain is by far the strongest Republican in the general election. This is a very consistent result in SUSA polls this past week.

• Union endorsements coming

It seems that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are about to get some good news. Edwards -- who has already been endorsed by many state SEIUs (Iowa, California most notably) -- appears ready to receive the support of the New Hampshire SEIU. This is significant because only local SEIUs that are helping Edwards would then be allowed to come in Iowa and New Hampshire to help out Edwards -- which could certainly be a boost for his campaign.

Clinton could compensate this with the help of the AFSCME, a major union with 1.4 million members, that could endorse Clinton nationally as early as next week. Newsweek's Howard Fineman explains why this is a result of the Clintons power machine, since the AFSCME president has ties with Bill Clinton going back to 1992. Clinton has done a remarkably good job at getting union endorsements when John Edwards has done such an extensive job at courting them. At the end of the day, unions seem to believe Clinton's nomination is too inevitable to be bet against, and Edwards is suffering from his third-place in the polls.

• Rasmussen polls Colbert

Steven Colbert is talking lately about a satirical run at the White House, and Rasmussen just polled possible three-way races. This is a really sill poll that I would not report if it wasn't for a very strange result: Colbert's entry in the race makes Clinton's victory margin bigger, implying that Colbert draws more votes from Republicans! How is that possible, given Colbert's liberal-lean and the fact that most of his votes are from 18-29 year olds ? In one match-up, Clinton gets 45% to Giuliani's 35% and Colbert's 13%.

Rasmussen notes that Colbert gets 28% of 18-29 year olds in this match-up, more than Giuliani does! Same in the race with Thompson. It thus appears that young Republicans are abandoning their party for Colbert. Is this a reflection on the fact that they do not want to vote for the Republican after 8 years of Bush, but are weary of voting for a Democrat, so they jump on whoever runs as a three-way candidate? For it is striking how Colbert gets the same range of numbers than Bloomberg did when he was tried, or that a "third-party religious candidate" is polling. All three-way races, whoever the third party candidate, shows an increased lead for Democrats.

If true, this hypothesis suggests just how frustrated Republican voters are, and their lack of enthusiasm. The GOP will have to remedy this big time if they want to win in 2008.