As a follow up to the earlier post about Rudy's indecision over the Ames straw poll, the continued front-loading of the primary schedule certainly helps Giuliani, especially Florida's move to January 29 which was made official yesterday.

While Giuliani trails slightly in the polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, he maintains a very strong lead in Florida.

Another factor, as Chris Cooper of the WSJ looks at this morning, is how early voting in some of the newly front-loaded primary states may possibly dilute the impact of Iowa even further.

As you can see from the graphic below, primary voters in California, which has moved its primary date up to February 5, will have their absentee ballots in hand a full week before the Iowa caucuses:

Cooper writes:

The early-voting trend may scramble the campaigning calculus in particular among Republicans, where leading candidates Rudy Giuliani and John McCain seem particularly vulnerable with the social conservatives dominating in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which also has traditionally had an early, influential slot in the process.

"Though Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina are important, we can put less of our chips there," said one Giuliani campaign aide. This aide said the campaign will use a "return on investment formula" to determine where to push an early-voting strategy. The Giuliani campaign has been concentrating a lot of effort so far on Florida, Texas and California.

This brings us back to the debate about the truly unique nature of this race. Are we in a brave new world where a front-loaded primary schedule upsets the traditional balance and allows a pro-choice Republican with national appeal and a substantial fund raising operation to glide past Iowa and the other early states to win the nomination? Or are we in the same old world we've always been in where a victory in Iowa and/or New Hampshire propels a candidate forward with enough momentum to take the nomination?

The question is made even more interesting, and the answer less knowable, by the winner take all delegate structure on the Republican side. In the end, a win in Iowa on doesn't do Mitt Romney much good if it only gets him into second place behind Giuliani in Florida, California, Texas, and Illinois.

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