Reading the tea leaves: Dead tie? Clear edge for Hoffman? Sheesh, who knows?

Pollster.com is home to some of the most interesting writing and thinking about political polls and surveys. Yes, it’s “horse race” stuff, but interesting to readers up to their eyebrows in a race like NY-23.

Check out their read on how Scozzafava’s departure might impact Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Doug Hoffman.

The short answer is that they expect a slight majority of Scozzafava voters to break for Hoffman; but they also note that many of these voters really like Barack Obama. So it’s…complicated.

Meanwhile, the “Intrade” political market ticker now gives Hoffman a 67% chance of winning.

And FiveThirtyEight.com — another poll discussion site — Nate Silver also gives the edge to the Conservative.

“Gun to my head?” Silver writes. “Sure, I’d take Hoffman at this point.”

Meanwhile, a respected polling firm called PPP reported yesterday that their survey on Saturday morning gave a clear edge to Hoffman, even before Scozzafava pulled out of the race.

So this morning around 10 AM I started up our NY-23 poll and after a few hundred interviews it appeared that Doug Hoffman was now running away with it-unweighted numbers showed him at 45% to 26% for Bill Owens and 17% for Dede Scozzafava.

For what it’s worth, I find those numbers sketchy. Not because Hoffman looks so strong (he’s been surging over the last two weeks) but because Owens looks weirdly weak.

This incomplete, small-sample survey would indicate a 7% drop for the Democrat fro m the Siena poll.

That’s a really unlikely event at this point in the race — and it would require a huge defection of Democrats from his campaign.

Bottom line? We’re in the fog-of-war stage here. This really is one of those races where we don’t know what’s going to happen, except that voters will go to the polls, pull for the guy who reflects their values, and someone will win.

It just doesn’t get any better than that.