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PPP has a new Iowa poll out showing what is becoming more and more obvious: Michele Bachmann is finished.

Ten days ago Michele Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. However, as we said at the time, it was a hollow and largely illusory victory. The top two candidates in the field – Romney and Perry – weren’t competing, so this was never going to be more than a battle for third place anyway. Beyond that, her victory was largely the result of free concerts by Randy Travis and other popular singers rather than a true test of electoral strength.

Rick Perry’s announcement in South Carolina made it clear that he was planning to run strongly in that state. The primaries were shaping up as follows: Michele Bachmann wins Iowa due to the amount of time and money she had spent campaigning there as well as having the “home field” advantage, Mitt Romney wins New Hampshire as the former governor of a neighboring state, Rick Perry wins South Carolina due to his across-the-board conservative appeal and executive experience, and then it’s a race to the finish. Romney and Perry were always going to have an advantage in subsequent primaries, but Bachmann could have laid some claim to future votes based on a victory in Iowa.

But Bachmann’s fade was already noticeable in the polling CNN released before the Iowa debate. Perry had yet to announce, and he had already replaced her as the main rival to Mitt Romney. Immediately after announcing, he had already taken over the lead from Romney, but Bachmann’s campaign still held onto the slender reed of their Ames’ victory.

Now comes a PPP poll which likely puts the nail in the coffin of her candidacy.

Bachmann’s hope of taking Iowa appears, for all intents and purposes, to be over. She comes in third, behind both Perry and Romney. Perry is at 22%, Romney is at 19% and Bachmann is at 18% while Ron Paul brings up the rear at 16%. Nobody else is polling in double digits. Even if every other candidate drops out by the time of the Iowa caucus and it’s just a three-person race at that point, she still loses 34-28-24 to Perry and Romney respectively with 14% undecided.

Coming on the heels of the Gallup polling in which she performs worst head-to-head against Obama, this is absolutely devastating for Bachmann and effectively puts an end to the rationale for her candidacy. If she can’t do better than third in Iowa, then where could she possibly claim to run competitively anywhere that would matter? Realistically? Nowhere.

The fuel upon which campaigns run before votes start being counted is their fundraising. Each campaign approaches deep-pocketed donors to present its case for why they should open their wallets to support the candidate. That sales pitch is usually predicated on two things: 1) how strongly the candidate will advocate for policies which the donor supports, and 2) how the candidate can and will win the election. Getting over the first hurdle is usually not terribly difficult for a candidate who is generally campaigning within the Overton Window for the political party in question. But the biggest hurdle is always the second one: how they can win.

This is a question that is going to be nearly impossible for Bachmann’s supporters to answer going forward. Is is theoretically possible for her to win the nomination? Yes. The PPP poll does show that if she is in a straight-up head-to-head contest against Mitt Romney, she is leading 44-42 in Iowa. But that would require not only Perry, but every other candidate in the field, to drop out as well. That’s simply not going to happen. What if Romney dropped out instead? Then she gets demolished by Perry in a 51-27 romp. And this is in Iowa which was supposed to be her strongest state.

We’ve been saying for more than a month now that this is a two-man race. It’s going to take some time for Bachmann to burn through what is sure to be a rapidly dwindling supply of campaign donations. Our best guess right now is that the bulk of it will be gone by the end of September, though how long will she continue to tilt at this windmill remains anybody’s guess. She may stay in the saddle all the way through the Iowa caucus, but it’s clear that it’s only a matter of when – not if – she will drop out of the race completely.