Although it may not seem like it from time to time, there are still three months until the Iowa Caucus and over twelve until the actual presidential election. Despite this, on the republican side, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani today released a memo detailing, to a large extent, his general election strategy for beating Hillary Clinton.

Based on his national polling, which is admittedly quite strong, the Giuliani camp has concluded that he is the only Republican with a serious chance of winning the primary. They have further concluded that Ms. Clinton is the only democrat with a serious chance of winning her primary. In fact, Giuliani’s campaign has gone so far as to produce a series of electoral maps, obtained by the Politico (www.Politico.com), that show it’s candidate’s position vs. Hillary Clinton. Given the current anti-war, anti-republican mentality in the country, it is safe to say that some of their state-by-state predictions are on the generous side.

You can check out the latest (about two weeks old) national tracking polling for both primaries here:

Democratic Race.

Republican Race.

You will notice that both Mayor Giuliani and, especially, Sen. Clinton do enjoy the sizable leads mentioned in the Giuliani memo. Does this mean they are shoe-ins for their respective party nomination? Absolutely not.

Take a look at a few more tracking poll results, these from the 2004 Democratic Primary.

2004 Democratic Race.

Note the leader throughout December and January (by a fairly sizeable margin, as well). It’s Howard Dean. Did Howard Dean win the Democratic nomination? No. After losing the Iowa Caucus (Mit Romney, not Rudy Giuliani, leads in Iowa right now), Dean’s campaign quickly folded under the rapid surge in popularity behind John Kerry.

Could the same thing happen this time around? Absolutely. On the Democratic side, Hillary is by no means the obvious choice for the nomination. As we are all aware, there are a number of highly qualified, tremendous candidates running this year. Any one of them could easily take advantage of a single weakness in the Clinton campaign and perhaps move into the lead. On the Republican side, the same situation exists for opposite reasons. While he is currently polling first, Mr. Giuliani’s ideology is by no means a good match with the generally conservative voters of the primary season. In fact, many argue that there are no candidates on the Republican side who make a sound “social conservative candidate”. Giuliani’s present lead in the polls may simply be a result of better name recognition.

- David Jacobson