While most commentary on the new CNN presidential poll focuses on Mike Huckabee’s poor showing against the major Democratic candidates, the Opinionator is struck by the good news the figures hold for two candidates who’ve been on the outside looking in of late:

On the Democratic side, Edwards performs best against each of the leading Republicans. In addition to beating Huckabee by 25 percent and McCain by 8 percent, the North Carolina Democrat beats Romney by 22 percentage points (59 percent to 37 percent) and Giuliani by 9 percentage points (53 percent to 44 percent) … The poll also shows that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona would do best against leading Democrats. He beats Clinton by 2 percentage points (50 percent to 48 percent), ties Obama (48 percent to 48 percent) and loses to Edwards by a smaller margin (8 points) than the other Republican candidates do. In addition to Huckabee, Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney lose to all three top Democrats in the survey.

Ross Douthat at the Atlantic has a good theory for Edwards’s strong showing.

First of all, most voters’ image of Edwards was formed in the ’04 race, when he ran as a more centrist candidate than he’s become this time around; thus despite having move steadily leftward over the last three years, he’s still perceived as the least liberal of the Democratic front-runners by the general public. … Second, he’s a Southern white male, and even if the percentage of swing voters who would rule out voting for a woman or a black man is relatively small (and it might be large-ish), his race and sex alone would still presumably give him a slight boost. Third, he’s received considerably less press attention than Hillary and Obama over the last six months, and in a year when a generic Democrat would presumably trounce a generic Republican, he’s presumably still a more “generic” figure than either of his better-publicized opponents, and thus a better vessel for undecided voters to pour their anti-GOP animus into.

Remember, perceived “electability” was what propelled John Kerry to victory in Iowa four years ago –­ the question for the Edwards campaign is whether the end result in ’04 soured early primary voters on the efficacy of that quality.