Nate Silver, the fun-to-read numbers guru at FiveThirtyEight.com, crunches Gov. Pawlenty's 2006 re-election data and writes of the "Hockey Dad's" 2012 presidential chances:

Pawlenty's small opening might come among voters who conclude that Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are a little scary (although Pawlenty is an evangelical Christian, he'll lose if he tries to out-conservative them), but that Charlie Crist and Mitt Romney are a little creepy.

Silver says that, at least versus Mike Hatch, Pawlenty showed potency with the young and parents with kids under 18. He places the governor toward the moderate side of the GOP moderate-to-conservative scale, and barely in the populist half of the populist-to-technocrat scale.

Silver notes the resulting quadrant — moderate populist — is relatively wide-open in the Republican field, giving Pawlenty the "small opening" described above. Although the governor repeatedly invoked religion in his "no third term" speech, Silver (a Democrat) writes "If I were him, I might talk a lot about guns — but not so much about God."