Beware of the undecided in New Hampshire

by Andrew Malcolm

There's a new poll out in the Granite State conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

We can expect to see a lot more of these in the coming weeks as the intensity of campaigning and interest grows for the expected Jan. 8 primary.

This one shows Hillary Clinton leading Democrats with 35 percent, Barack Obama with 21 percent, John Edwards with 15, Bill Richardson with 10 and all the others in a single-digit bunch.

Among Republicans, it shows Mitt Romney in the lead with 32 percent, Rudy Giuliani second with 20 percent, John McCain third with 17, a surging Ron Paul with lots of money up from 2 to 7 percent, Mike Huckabee at 5 and all the others, including Fred Thompson, below that.

But that's not the most important data in this survey.

What's most important is the little-noticed numbers revealing that with slightly less than two months to go before the voting, 48 percent of Democrats and fully 60 percent of Republicans remain undecided.

Now that's a volatile setting, made for stunning surprises in the nation's first primary vote.

Andrew Malcolm writes for Top of the Ticket, the Los Angeles Times political blog.