by Patrick Appel
Nate Silver sizes up Perry's lead and what it means for Romney:
Mr. Romney retains a reasonably large lead in New Hampshire for now. The danger is that, if Mr. Perry were to win Iowa convincingly, he could clear the field of other conservative candidates. New Hampshire has a lot of moderate and independent voters — but it is still majority conservative. And although Mr. Romney holds a solid lead over each of the individual conservatives, he does not hold a lead over them collectively: Mr. Perry, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich together have in excess of 50 percent of the vote there, based on a trendline constructed from recent polls of the state, as compared to 34 percent for Mr. Romney.
Mark Blumenthal's analysis here. Bernstein throws some cold water on the Perry surge:
[I]n a contest with little solid support for any candidate, very large short-term surges are likely. Even Herman Cain had a bit of one, and Donald Trump had a huge and entirely meaningless one. Perry isn't Cain, and he certainly isn't Trump; he's a very serious contender who might well win. But at least part of this polling surge may well dissipate in the next few weeks, as his announcement bounce fades. It's impossible right now to know how much of his polling support is real and how much is fluff.
(Screenshot of Pollster's poll of polls)
The Dish 