For a third survey in a row, Sarah Palin tops the Hot Air charts, garnering 34% of the readership’s vote. Palin leads a pack consisting of Chris Christie (who for a third survey came in second) at 14%, Herman Cain at 9%, Tim Pawlenty at 7%, and Mitt Romney. Notably, Romney has finished fifth in every survey, and in every survey regardless of sample size, has received 6% of the vote.

Here’s the chart of all the Primary votes so far, starting from the first one we did in November, by percentage of the vote.

For Vice President, Rep. Allen West leads the pack at 22%, followed by Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann. West’s positioning is strongly correlated to Sarah Palin-related votes as her most favored running mate; as Palin voters go up, so too do VP West votes. The VP chart over time:

Top second choice for President? Chris Christie.

Top vote loser? For a second survey, Sarah Palin.

Demographics of this survey:

Nearly 700 people indicated that they did not comment at Hot Air, but “would like to!” For those that have provided email addresses, I’ll try to give you the heads up if I have forewarning as to when registration opens. Regardless, I’ve passed along your interest to the guys upstairs.

Two quick, final points.

It’s important to start winnowing down the candidate pool we’ve got presently. Chris Christie and Paul Ryan will be removed from the topline survey question next month if they don’t indicate a reasonable interest to run; there’s no sense in keeping candidates in the first-choice President question who’ve said they absolutely won’t do it. Gotta move on, as disappointing as it might be. DeMint may also go.

Once the pool is winnowed, the next step is working out when and how candidates will exit the field. Like I indicated when I was predicting House outcomes, predicting nationwide outcomes can be a lot trickier if we just gloss over local circumstances. With the surveys we’ve been doing at Hot Air, we’re gathering lots of valuable knowledge as to these local circumstances; I’m looking forward to matching those circumstances up with the primary calendar, once it crystallizes.

I’ll toss out the first few months of last cycle’s calendar, per About.com, for your perusal as a rough sketch of what next year’s calendar might look like. I look forward to your thoughts in the comments, and at my Twitter.

JANUARY 2008

January 3: Iowa (caucuses)

January 5: Wyoming (GOP caucuses)

January 8: New Hampshire (primary)

January 15: Michigan

January 19: Nevada (precinct caucuses), South Carolina (R primary)

January 26: South Carolina (D primary)

January 29: Florida

FEBRUARY 2008

February 1: Maine (R)

February 5: Alabama, Alaska (caucuses), Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado (caucuses), Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho (D caucuses), Illinois, Kansas (D caucuses), Massachusetts, Minnesota (caucuses), Missouri, Montana (R caucuses), New Jersey, New Mexico (D), New York, North Dakota (caucuses), Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, American Samoa (caucuses)

February 9: Louisiana, Kansas (R), Nebraska (D caucuses), Washington (D&R caucuses)

February 10: Maine (D caucuses)

February 12: District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia

February 19: Hawaii (D), Washington (R primary), Wisconsin

MARCH 2008

March 4: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont

March 8: Wyoming (D)

March 11: Mississippi

APRIL 2008

April 22: Pennsylvania

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.