HILLARY, RUDY LEAD SIENA NEW YORK POLL

Not too surprsingly, two New Yorkers top the list in a presidential preference poll taken in New York state by the Siena Research Insititute.

In the Siena New York Poll, released today, Sen. Hillary Clinton leads the Democratic field. She's favored by 49% of those polled. Illinois Sen. Barak Obama is a distant second at 15%. None of the other Democratic hopefuls - including Al Gore, John Edwards and John (I started a joke) Kerry - got into double digits.

On the Republican side, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani tops the list, but just barely. Giuliani is favored by 34% of New York Republicans, compared with 33% for Arizona Sen. John McCain. Outgoing New York Gov. George Pataki clocked in at 7%, behind "other candidate" (16%) and "don't know/no opinion" (10%).

Really, the intriguing part of this poll is the one-on-one matchups between Clinton and McCain or Giuliani. Head-to-head Clinton topped Giuliani 53% to 39% and she trounced McCain 55% to 36%.

That's interesting because in the summer, before November's blue wave, Giuliani would top Clinton in some of the one-on-one polls and Clinton and McCain were often neck-and-neck.

Obama would fall to both Giuliani and McCain, based on the results of this Siena poll.

DIAGEO HOTLINE POLL SHOWS NEW (BLUE) WAVE OF OPTIMISM

Another poll released today, the Diageo Hotline poll, shows that by a large margin actual voters in last Tuesday's elections are glad the Democrats took control of Congress (60% happy to 29% unhappy for the House; 59%-30% for the Senate). Some 53% of actual voters said they believe things will get better in Iraq with the Dems in control of Congress. Only 16% think things will get worse.