I'm beginning to think that having a solid organization or good "fundamentals" doesn't matter in this day and age. It's less about the ground game, and more about the soundbites put into the media. I mean, what else could account for Cain and Newt's rise? Newt's entire campaign team ditched him, and Cain loses top staffers every couple of months. Romney's had the strongest campaign team from the get-go, with electioneering veterans around him as well as large numbers of people in the swing states. Yet he can't shuffle past 30% nationally, and now in NH, his "safe" state, he leads by two. Unless this poll is an outlier, I would expect that whoever wins Iowa, wins New Hampshire.
I think there's a lot of truth to this and one of the more interesting things about this cycle. However, we shouldn't really jump to conclusions about this until voting actually occurs. It's a lot easier for Cain and Gingrich supporters to say they support them in a telephone poll than it is for them to actually show up and vote... we could have a situation where the campaigns that built a good infrastructure in Iowa and NH end up doing a lot better than they're polling. We just won't know until Election Day.
