The Zogby national numbers are the only ones I've seen for this last week. I'll post them here, for the top tier, with comparison to Zogby's previous poll in mid-October, and four sets of numbers from late October.
If Zogby did trial heats by candidate name, PollingReport doesn't have them. Zogby has Bush and Generic Dem even at 41/41, compared to 45/43 Dem last month.
Here are the numbers:
........Zogby...Previous..........Average of
........11/3-5..10/15-18..........4 recent polls
Dean....15......12................15.5
Clark...10......10................13.5
Gep......9.......9................12.0
Lieb.....9.......8................12.5
Kerry....7.......9.................9.3
For the new Zogby, N=558, and the MoE is 4.2 percent.
........Marist..........ABC/WaPo........Quinnipiac......CNN/USAT
........10/27-29........10/26-29........10/23-27........10/24-26
Dean....16..............17..............13..............16
Clark....8..............14..............17..............15
Gep.....10..............14..............12..............12
Lieb....12..............13..............13..............12
Kerry....9...............8..............10..............10
Comparing the new Zogby with his previous one, there's basically no change for anyone but Dean and maybe Kerry. Dean's 3-point gain is less than the MoE, but enough to say that he's probably edged up, while Kerry may show slippage.
Compared to last week's round of polls, Zogby's numbers are all lower except for Dean's. I don't think this is slippage of the other candidates, just difference of methodology.
Taking all the polls together gives a fairly consistant pattern. Dean is leading the pack, though just by a shade, with Clark, Gep, and Lieberman all bunched together just behind him, and Kerry another shade farther back. I didn't list Edwards because his national numbers are down in Sharpton territory.
Clark has stabilized after his entry bounce, and Lieb has stablized after his long early-season slide. My subjective feeling is that Lieberman has no sizzle and isn't going anywhere, but if he somehow catches fire he's got decent base numbers to work from. Kerry may be slowly drifting down out of the top tier.
These numbers are more or less the state of play coming into this week. Since then, the two big stories have both been Dean: the Confederate flag flap, a negative; and the pending SIEU/AFSCME double endorsement, a positive. My guess is that in the short term the flag hurts Dean more than the unions help - endorsements as such rarely move numbers; it's the actual support they give that can be important later on.
So, Dean is leading it, and there are hints that he's starting to pull out from the pack. Still, he's at about 15 percent nationally - with the rest of the top tier around 10-12 percent. This race is about as wide open as it gets!
-- Rick Robinson