A brand new poll by Gallup measures the sentiments of both Republican and Democratic voters towards the laundry list of potential candidates for each party’s presidential nomination.? This poll is useful because it manages to extract the casual voters who aren’t yet paying attention by allowing them to register no opinion on each of the candidates, thus giving us the approval/disapproval breakdown of those partisans who have actually heard of George Allen, Mitt Romney, etc., even as early as July 2006.? The results are surprising, and I can’t help but wonder if this poll turns the conventional wisdom of 2008 on its head.? Instead of painting a picture of what is generally anticipated by the talking heads — a free-for-all on the GOP side and a Hillary coronation by the Dems — this poll suggests we may be looking at just the opposite: a clear path to the nomination for Rudy and a protracted Democratic battle between Hillary, Edwards, and if he runs, Gore.

Please be sure to read on.

The important thing to remember when examining this poll?is to analyze it proportionately and not numerically.? The poll asks Republican and Democratic voters whether or not each 2008?candidate would be “acceptable” or “unacceptable.”? Because few candidates have 100 percent name recognition, their raw percentage doesn’t matter nearly as much as the percentage breakdown of the voters who are actually familiar with the candidate.? For example, Sen. Bill Frist received a 38% “acceptable” rating among Republicans.? But if it turned out that only 40% of Republicans even had an opinion on Frist, that would be very good news for the senator, because that would mean that the vast majority of Republicans who had heard of Frist supported him, and, presumably, once those who hadn’t heard of him started paying attention, they would break for and against Frist in a similar manner.

Unfortunately for Frist, 82% of Republicans registered an opinion on the senator, meaning that a majority of Republicans who’ve heard of Frist actually think he’d make?an unacceptable presidential nominee.? Presumably, once the remaining 18% of Republicans hear about him, they’ll break?down on similar lines, and Frist will not have majority support among Republicans and will not garner the nomination.

All right.? Now that we understand the best way to analyze this poll, let’s break down the candidates of each party into two groups.? The first group includes the candidates who register majority support among those partisans who currently hold an opinion on them.? The second group only attains minority support amongst those who know their names.

Republicans with majority support, in descending order: Giuliani, Rice, McCain, Allen

Republicans with minority support, in no particular order: Gingrich, Bush (Jeb), Frist, Cheney, Romney, Huckabee, Brownback, Pataki

Democrats with majority support, in descending order: Edwards, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Biden

If you’re really, really curious to see the laundry list of Dems with minority support, click the above link because, frankly, it’s exhaustive and it just contains all the usual suspects anyway.? Mark Warner and Russ Feingold do make the list though, which is a bit surprising.

The reason this poll controls for name recognition is?that only those voters who have heard of the candidates presumably register an opinion.? So Allen’s 36%/35% acceptable/unacceptable split actually beats Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich, who have 44%/52% and 45%/50% splits, respectively.? That’s because we can assume that there’s no fundamental difference between those Republicans who have been paying attention to each individual candidate and those who haven’t, meaning that when the no-opinions start paying attention, Gingrich and Bush will still have a minority share of the GOP vote, while Allen will still have a slim majority share.

Now that we understand that, let’s compare the majority-support candidates in each field.

On the GOP side, Rudy enjoys a 73%/25% split, with Rice close behind at 68%/29%.? Both of these leads dwarf those of McCain and Allen, with Allen barely enjoying majority support and McCain somewhere in between with a 55%/41% split.? With this sort of gap between Giuliani/Rice and all the others, I would expect to see a Rudy v. Condi race resulting from all of this.? But with Secretary Rice refusing to run, that leaves Rudy at the head of the GOP pack with a chasm between he and the other candidates that generally produces a clear path to the party nomination, not the battle royale that I and so many others have been predicting.

The Democratic side, however, paints a different picture.? Hillary, Edwards, and Gore are all very, very evenly matched in terms of proportional support.? Since at least two of those three are clearly running and the?third appears to be flirting with the idea of jumping in, it wouldn’t be surprising at all given these numbers to see a classic no holds barred Democratic nomination battle, with Hillary and Edwards and possibly Gore trading blows to the bitter end.? Presumably, Hillary would represent the establishment center-left, Gore, the elitist left, and Edwards, the populist left.? Interestingly absent is majority support for any candidate who?represents the Warner/Bayh/Lieberman centrist wing of the party, making me wonder whether or not the last six years have somehow resulted in a Democratic purge of its center, exemplified by the current Lieberman excommunication that’s about to happen in Connecticut.? It’s also noteworthy that Edwards is the most popular of the Democratic candidates; it wouldn’t be hard to see an Iowa Edwards victory followed by a scorched earth campaign by the Clintons, something that would only benefit the GOP ticket in the long-run.

Final thoughts.? Mitt Romney is once again notably underperforming amongst Republicans.? His numbers are actually worse than Frist’s.? Given the energy that exists online with regard to a Romney candidacy, especially among evangelicals, this is an interesting disconnect and it once again leads me to wonder whether there is a latent anti-Mormon strain out there in the GOP grassroots that won’t show up explicitly but will emerge at the polling place.