Magellan has released a poll of the New Hampshire GOP primary. Mitt Romney has a good lead on Governor Palin while everyone else is pretty much an also-ran. The good news from the poll is that Governor Palin has closed Romney’s lead by a small amount. She had trailed Romney by 29 in the May Magellan New Hampshire poll and now she’s down by a smaller amount. Her favorable ratings in the state among GOP primary voters are better than Kelly Ayotte’s favorable rating in the last Magellan poll of the New Hampshire GOP Senate primary in 2010. It’s also noteworthy that Ovide Lamontagne had a much better favorable rating than Ayotte but Ayotte won because of a divided field. Ayotte would likely have not come close in a one-on-one with Lamontagne.

It also appears that as Newt Gingrich fades, Governor Palin benefits. Gingrich lost 50% of his support from the May poll while Palin’s support has increased by 5%. I tend to agree with this take from the extreme isolationist “American Conservative” blog:

I remain doubtful that Huckabee will run since he has a much better deal at FOX, though on the other hand I can well believe that he and Gingrich (and oddly Santorum) are all being shuttled in to fragment Palin’s vote and keep her down. For now let’s just assume that only Huckabee would be out of the picture, that still bring’s [sic] Palin all the way to striking distance against a Romney with nowhere to go but down. Gingrich out would make a statistical tie.

What this analysis omits is the strong possibility that a persuasive moderate will emerge to help Governor Palin in New Hampshire. Rudy Giuliani would take a significant percentage of the vote that Mitt Romney is receiving now. Tim Pawlenty will certainly receive more than 4% of the vote in New Hampshire. Mitch Daniels or Jon Huntsman probably keep Romney up late at night. If any of these guys gets hot, Governor Palin may be in position to end this thing quickly in New Hampshire.

In any event, I’m wondering if the media or political chattering class understands that the New Hampshire GOP electorate is completely different from nearly every other GOP electorate. It’s one of the most pro-abortion GOP electorates in the country. The GOP electorate in New Hampshire is also comprised of fewer foreign policy hawks than nearly every other GOP electorate in the country. The New Hampshire GOP electorate is less religious than nearly every other GOP electorate in the country. In no way is the New Hampshire GOP electorate anywhere close to representative of the Republican electorate as a whole. If you look at GOP primary polls conducted of different states across the country (including states won by Barack Obama), you’ll see that Romney is regional candidate who does well in some (but not all) Northeastern states and some (but not all) states comprised of a disproportionate percentage of Mormons. And again, all it’ll take for Romney’s hold in New Hampshire to fall is for Rudy, Pawlenty, Daniels, or Huntmsan to do well with moderates and it’s tough to see how that doesn’t happen.