Day after day, week after week, new political popularity polls are released attempting to show which Republican candidates are leading the race to gain the GOP nomination for the 2012 presidential election.

These poll numbers are broken down into all types of questions and categories, i.e, which candidate do you trust the most, which candidate has the best chance of defeating President Obama or which candidate do you favor based on your age, where you live, race, income and many other identifications.

All of these polls and their findings are interesting, but the only poll that really counts is the one taken on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012, only 11 months and 7 days from now: the presidential election.

The race among Republican hopefuls has been a roller coaster, and this pattern is likely to continue until after several state caucuses and primaries that will narrow the race to the top two or three most electable candidates.

The battle among GOP candidates will be intense but nothing like what the nominee will encounter in the head-to-head race with President Obama. Knowledgeable and seasoned observers say the presidential campaign will be the most costly in this nation’s history and also the meanest.

Republican primary candidates are spending millions of dollars in their battle for the party’s nomination, and the winner then will have to ask for additional support from many who already have made significant contributions to the favorites in the primary campaigns.

On the other hand, Obama will not have to spend any money getting the Democratic nomination, and some say his campaign war chest may total $1 billion. In his first race for the presidency, he raised a record amount of money and had a sizable surplus after winning the election. His opponent, Sen. John McCain, had far less funding and, according to several of his senior campaign strategists, he almost had to cut back on his campaign because of a lack of money.

Obama will have many millions more to spend in his quest for another four years in the White House — whoever his Republican opponent may be.

Also, Obama will enter the race with a far larger corps of volunteers who have committed their time, effort and money to support his election. In the 2008 election, Obama campaign leaders were able to call on this massive army of volunteers to move from one state to another if they were needed to beef up the Obama campaign. Obama, his campaign staff and his helpers raised his presidential campaign to higher levels of sophistication, execution and toughness. This will be repeated in the next 11 months, and the big question for Republicans is whether they can mount a successful, winning campaign even though the nation’s economic problems, the many failures of Obama to live up to his grand-sounding pledges and promises and his dismal record in numerous important categories, all should combine to help his Republican challenger.

The most dangerous and potentially costly thing for GOP leaders and, in general for all Republicans, would be to think Obama has been sufficiently wounded by his actions over the past three years that he is in a weakened position and will be easier to defeat in the upcoming election.

The fact is, he will be an extremely tough opponent, and he and his supporters will put up a fierce fight.

Obama has not been good for this country, and he has followed through on his 2008 campaign pledge to try to fundamentally change America. This country is at a dangerous crossroads, and it is frightening to think what four more years of Obama would do to this nation.

For this reason, it is hoped GOP strategists will put together a strong, well-planned campaign for their presidential hopeful. Republicans attending their national nominating convention should select the candidate who has the best chance to beat Obama, the candidate who can more than hold his own in any debate with Obama and who can present the Republican position in a strong, easy-to-understand, factual and motivating manner, a person who can look the TV cameras in the eye and energize and shoot straight about the dangers facing this country. Also, these strategists need to design and fund a powerful campaign to help Republicans hold onto or increase their majority in the U.S. House and win enough seats to gain a majority in the U.S. Senate.

This way, if Obama should win, GOP majorities in the House and Senate could defeat or slow some of Obama’s efforts to change this country in so many dangerous and harmful ways.

What happens in the next 11 months will determine the fate of America for years to come, not just four more years.