Have you been reading the latest polls on the 2008 presidential contest?

Are you confused?

That’s understandable.

One day, a Newsweek poll shows Barack Obama leading the Democratic race in Iowa by six points over Hillary Clinton. A day later, MSNBC and McClatchy produce a poll that has Clinton up by two.

On the Republican side, in just a few days, Mitt Romney’s longtime lead collapses and a hitherto little-known former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, soars to the top.

And while that’s happening, Clinton and Rudy Giuliani continue to lead the national polls as they have for a year, although Huckabee is breathing down the former New York mayor’s neck on the GOP side.

So what’s a political junkie – or even a more casual observer – to do?

Here are some guidelines:

Disregard national polls.

In February 1984, Walter Mondale led Gary Hart by 57 percent to 7 percent in a CBS-New York Times poll published the day before Hart routed the former vice president in the New Hampshire primary.

History shows that national surveys initially reflect name recognition and are a lagging indicator strongly influenced by results in the early voting states.

Take Iowa polls with a grain of salt.

Caucus turnout is notoriously hard to figure, given the relatively small number of participants. And organization still plays a major role, despite increased stress on television ads; voters don’t spend 30 seconds in a voting booth, they need to spend several hours attending a meeting on a cold winter evening midweek.

In the GOP race, for example, Romney has a far more substantial organization that might neutralize some or all of Huckabee’s momentum from his fellow Christian conservatives.

Among Democrats, Clinton has more support among older voters, who are more likely to vote. Obama does better with younger voters, whose turnout rate traditionally lags. And every Democratic poll for months has shown leads within the margin of error, meaning it’s basically a three-way tie among those two and former Sen. John Edwards.

Take polls in New Hampshire and elsewhere with even more skepticism.

They’ll change when Iowa’s results become known.

In 2004, Howard Dean had a 2-to-1 lead over John Kerry in New Hampshire a month before the Iowa caucuses. Three days after Kerry won in Iowa, he pulled ahead in the New Hampshire polls and beat Dean by 13 points.

And while Giuliani today touts the number of states where polls show him leading, most are places where the surveys are even less meaningful because the primaries are weeks after Iowa. One South Carolina GOP poll shows five candidates between 10 and 20 percent, meaning any could win.

Watch the trends.

Both national front-runners, Clinton and Giuliani, are losing support. Romney has lost his lead in Iowa. Obama and Huckabee are gaining. But three weeks is plenty of time to reverse those trends.

Watch what the candidates do.

This may be the single best indicator.

For months, Clinton stayed positive and chided those who attacked her. Now she’s striking back, a sure sign that her polling shows that the attacks have damaged her. Now she’s the one in trouble.

Obama, by contrast, is staying positive, a sign he believes his strategy is working – and that he’s winning. And Edwards eased his pointed criticism of his rivals, a sign it wasn’t working.

Among the Republicans, Romney hadn’t planned to give a speech on his Mormon faith until later in the campaign but moved it up. The reason: He was losing the support of Christian conservatives in Iowa, in part because of concerns about his religion.

Another clue: Who is under attack?

Romney and Giuliani spent weeks assailing one another, a sign that each saw the other as his major rival. Now Romney has turned his fire toward Huckabee, after polls showed the latter surging ahead in Iowa and South Carolina.

The good news: It’s only three weeks until Iowa. Then, we’ll finally be able to report the results of what voters do, not what they say they’ll do.

And we’ll be able to figure out who’s really winning.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is: [email protected].