Although Huckabee is still the favorite candidates of Evangelicals (in Iowa), he has lost considerable support from them in the last couple of weeks. Rasmussen reports that where 62% of Iowa Evangelicals planned to vote for him once, that number has fallen to 49%.

That’s still significant, but from a man who needs Evangelicals to support his candidacy, it may not be enough. Evangelicals are his base. The more divided Evangelicals are, the less chance Huckabee has to win the nomination.

Not only do Evangelicals turn their back on Huckabee, Protestant Christians in general do so as well: 33% of other Protestants supported him a few weeks ago. Nowadays, however, he receives the support of only 17% of them. That’s significantly less than Mitt Romney (30%) and slightly less than someone who has taken on the Religious Right on many occasions in the past: John McCain (18%).

In what’s yet another indication that Huckabee is slipping, Iowa Republicans think less favorable about him than they do about Romney (73%). If we look at how favorable Iowa Republicans think about the different candidates, it becomes clear that Fred Thompson could do better than the “who do you plan to vote for” polls indicate: he ranks the favorability ratings, with 77%.

There’s also good news for Huckabee though: he and Thompson top the second choice list “[a]mong those who say there’s a good chance they could change their mind.”

What does this all mean? Well, for one thing that Iowa truly is too close to call and that Rasmussen isn’t going to predict a winner. As far as I’m concerned, Romney’s the slight favorite, if nothing else than because the trend speaks in his favor (which is quite a different matter in New Hampshire, where John McCain has made a comeback). I’m of the opinion that polls don’t always necessarily reflect true support for people – by that I mean that the exact numbers can be off – but that they are useful if one wants to know what shifts are taking place, in other words, what the ‘trend’ is.