Gallup is out with its first real look at voter attitudes heading into next year's election:

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- With about a year until the 2004 presidential and congressional elections,

Stop, stop, stop. That's just it. There's a year to go between now and Election Day. It's fun to look at polling numbers, but there's a lot of time remaining. Ok, continue:

the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey finds voters about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans in party affiliation and electoral choices for 2004. While President George W. Bush currently leads all of the major Democratic candidates running for president when he is pitted against them one by one, only 44% of voters say they expect to vote for his re-election, while 43% expect to vote against him -- probably a better indicator of voter sentiment at a time when the Democratic candidates are not well known.

The problem with these polls is - while they are good indicators of general national sentiment, they don't say a thing about the electoral math. Remember the electoral math? That pesky "technicality" of the U.S. Constitution that forces presidential candidates to win the most votes in a state, to get that state's electors? This poll says nothing about the current electoral math.

Since 2000, the electoral map hasn't really changed. However, what has changed - though it's not reflected in this poll - is that President Bush, a Republican, is within spitting distance of taking New York and California. Democrats can't afford to lose either state.

New York and California are so close, and will be contested next year, that Democrats will have to spend time and resources just to keep those two states in their corral - time and resources they didn't have to spend in 2000, 1996 or 1992.

So, in the meantime, these polls are interesting, (Howard Dean is tied nationally among Democrats with Wesley Clark, and hasn't really run away from the pack yet) the real poll will look at the Electoral College Map and which states are leaning blue, and which states are leaning red.