I've been pretty relentless in promoting my opinion that polls don't matter when you're months away from the real beginning of the Republican primary. But we're starting to get close to the beginning of the primaries now, and this poll is in the one place that matters: Iowa, where the caucuses will take place on January 3rd:

Cain gets 37% of likely caucus attendees, 10 points ahead of Mitt Romney, who is at 27%.
Ron Paul is third with 12%, followed by Newt Gingrich 8%.
Rick Perry is all the way down to fifth with just 6% with Michele Bachmann behind him at 4%. Rick Santorum, for all the time he's spent campaigning there, is at 3%.

If you're flavor of the month during the right month, you could turn that opportunity into something greater. Nobody is expecting Romney to win Iowa, but if Cain beats everyone else as handily as this poll is saying, he could turn his campaign into a lasting national platform. But Iowa always comes down to—to borrow a Cain term—boots on the ground. That's how Obama won it in 08. Could there be a remarkably well-put-together ground campaign that we don't know about? Will somebody lower on the ticket surprise us? It's always possible in Iowa.