Maybe Thompson is (yawn) just trying to pace himself

Now that we’re coming down to the last few precious weeks before voting begins in the primaries to choose candidates in the race to decide who should lead the country and the Free World, former Sen. Fred Thompson is ramping up his campaign schedule. Seven other hard-working Republican campaigners are close on his tail.

One recent morning, according to the schedule from Thompson’s press office, he began his campaign day bright and early at 8:15 a.m. with a telephone interview with Andy Peterson on WMT in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He followed that 25 minutes later with an interview on WFLA Tampa Bay, Fla., and then at 10:40 with an interview on WHO in Des Moines, Iowa.

By 11 a.m., he was done.

And that was it for another campaign day.

When 1% is 50%

Rep. Duncan Hunter, the San Diego area’s very own presidential candidate, may take heart, we suppose, that he’s moving in the right direction -- a new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll finds that among likely Republican voters nationwide, support for his little-noticed campaign has gone from 2% in October to 3% now, a possible 50% increase in support.

Of course, taking into account the plus-or-minus sampling error of 5 percentage points, he could just be treading water in a shallow pond.

And even if there’s the slightest of positive trends for Hunter, the survey seems to show that his political handicaps include a pronounced gender gap: Among those who identify themselves as members of the Republican Party, 6% of males said they supported Hunter; 0% of females did.

Dodd stuck in neutral

Recent polls can show conflicting data, but they’ve achieved unanimity on one front: Christopher J. Dodd probably doesn’t have to worry about the continuing demands of a presidential campaign much longer.

Dodd, as we’ve noted, has gone to great (some might say extreme) lengths to make headway in Iowa by moving his family there and enrolling a daughter in kindergarten, giving Iowa three senators and Connecticut just one. Dodd hopes to stage a surprise in the Jan. 3 caucuses. But if he’s made progress, it’s not discernible yet.

Two recent surveys found him holding steady at 1% support among likely caucus-goers. The third -- offering a more precise figure, perhaps because a university conducted it -- put him at 0.6%.

Running ahead of him were Dennis J. Kucinich (1.1%) and “refused to say” (1.6%).

The Ron Paul Conspiracy

We’re blowing the top off the Ron Paul Conspiracy, that vast unorganized protest movement that has silently become one of the more interesting political phenomena of the current election season.

We’ve learned for the very first time the shockingly ordinary details of a movement of thousands of disparate, dissatisfied people, some of whom want an end to the Iraq war, an end to gun controls and the IRS, an end to marijuana bans and a return to the gold standard.

These Paulites believe the government has been hijacked by a bevy of big interests that threaten the freedoms of ordinary Americans. They’re not going to take it anymore. Locally, they’re even organizing a reenactment of a brazenly defiant act, the Boston Tea Party -- except it’ll be in Santa Monica and won’t involve tea or white people dressed as Indians. And the protesters promise not to leave anything foreign floating in the water.

They patrol the Internet day and night. They stand on windy bridges on the interstate, holding inflammatory signs saying: RonPaul2008.com.

Even as you sleep at night, some of the 1,200 Paul meet-up groups are hand-writing letters to all 700,000 independent Iowa voters urging them to consider their long-shot leader.

A couple of weeks ago, Paulites raised $4.2 million on the Internet in one day, a near-record, and a sum they intend to more than double on Dec. 16, the anniversary of that rebellious tea party.

As one result, the ultra-lean Paul organization can afford advertising in New Hampshire in hopes of pumping his poll numbers up near double digits.

Few professionals -- well, to tell the truth, no one -- actually give Paul any chance of winning the GOP nomination. But then, up until Yorktown back in the 1700s, the smart money was on the British.

Hey, Iowa, read this!

Here’s a little secret that should chasten those smug folks in Iowa and New Hampshire who think that it’s their right to always vote first in presidential years.

Publicity and news coverage to the contrary, they really aren’t first anymore.

Thanks to quiet changes in how busy Americans choose to vote -- namely the explosion of early absentee voting as a convenience, not a necessity caused by travel -- Florida’s absentee voters will actually be the first to start voting in the primary process for the 2008 election. They can start casting their ballots on Christmas, nine days before Iowa’s caucus-goers thought they’d be first. This means that voting in the 2008 presidential election process actually begins in 2007.

That curious reminder emerged from a conference on elections, hosted by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

A survey of election deadlines -- distributed by one speaker, Paul Gronke, an elections expert at Oregon’s Reed College -- shows the Sunshine State’s absentee voters will get first crack at the candidates.

Additionally, Gronke’s documents show that a strong trend toward early absentee voting all over the West is also quietly undercutting the first-in-the-nation primacy of the Hawkeye and Granite states. By this measure, for instance, Iowa is merely tied for second in voting order. On Jan. 3, the night of the Iowa caucuses (and the Fiesta Bowl, which might tempt some to stay home by the TV), Arizona voters can begin voting absentee.

Californians may begin voting -- either absentee or in person at select locations -- as early as Jan. 7, a day before the New Hampshire primary. And New Mexico voters start voting absentee on Jan. 5.

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Times staff writer Joe Mathews contributed to this report. Excerpted from The Times’ political blog, Top of the Ticket, at www.latimes.com/ topoftheticket.