Opinion: A new Times/Bloomberg poll posts soon

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Barack Obama is winning the battle of ‘new ideas.’ But that’s about the only good news for him in a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll that focused on the three early-voting states in the presidential nominating process: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Hillary Clinton has a solid lead among Democratic-leaning voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and a lesser advantage in Iowa.

Obama, other than being clearly identified by voters as the leader in offering new ideas, fails to stake out any obvious advantages. In Iowa and New Hampshire, he vies with John Edwards for second place.

In the Republican presidential race, the survey shows that Mitt Romney is on track with his strategy of focusing on Iowa and New Hampshire, and then hoping that victories in those two states will boomerang him past Rudy Giuliani -- who has more of a national following -- in contests that follow. Romney leads in Iowa and, by a lesser margin, in New Hampshire.

Still, preferences among GOP-leaning voters are fractured, with no candidate claiming substantial support in either of those two states or South Carolina (where newly minted candidate Fred Thompson makes his best showing).

We won’t reveal the exact numbers in the candidate matchups here. For that, check LATimes.com at 2 p.m. Pacific time today and Wednesday’s print edition for all the figures and analysis.

-- Don Frederick