Lieberman/Gephardt: A sure thing in '04
Kari Chisholm
I'm getting a little tired of reading about all these national polls on the presidential primaries. They're entirely bogus.
First of all, we don't have a national presidential primary. We do it state by state. So a national poll doesn't reflect the actual vote(s) that will take place.
Second, this far out, they're hardly predictive. After all, exactly four years ago, the top two contenders for the Democratic nomination were Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt. From TIME:
Pundits and bloggers would do well to tape a copy of these poll results, from ABC-Washington Post in January of 2003, on their monitors/mirrors/most viewed flat surface in their office:Joseph Lieberman 27
Richard Gephardt 14
John Edwards 11
John Kerry 10
Al Sharpton 7
Howard Dean 3
Don't know 24...Early polls aren't so much even popularity contests as trivia quizzes (The question being, "Have you ever heard of this person before?")
Hat tip to Pollster.com, a great place to track this stuff.
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Jan 27, '07
Good point. In 1985, the two leading Dems for pres. in '88 were Ted Kennedy and Gary Hart (Sounds like the start of some dirty joke, doesn't it?) Kennedy didn't run and Hart dropped out and rentered as a weak candidiate who finsihed last in Iowa and N.H. Mario Cuomo was third place and he didn't run. No on mentioned Paul Simon, who ran and almost won Iowa. Dick Gephardt was at about 1% early on, and he won in Iowa. Mike Dukakis wasn't much stronger, and he won the nomination. Jesse Jackson ran a stong second, far better than early polls had predicted. Unless there is an incumbent vice president like Gore and Mondale, the early "front runners'" poll numbers are likely to fade.
12:52 p.m.
Jan 27, '07
And when did W become a serious contender? Seems like he charged out of nowhere pretty fast (of course, as the son of a president, he had certain advantages only Hillary shares).
I'm also going to avoide getting caught up in the blogospheric echo chamber. Before--and even immediately after--the Iowa caucuses, I was absolutely certain Dean was going to win the nomination. It's easy to believe the hype when everyone you know is promoting it (turns out the commie Prius-driving types I hung out with weren't representative of America--shocking!).
3:02 p.m.
Jan 27, '07
I both agree and disagree.
I agree to the extent that early polls in particular clearly aren't very predictive. But on the other hand it seems to me that polls in general are influential in that they are ostensibly reflective of public opinions and I think that being perceived as a winner plays a huge roll in most, if not all, primary races.
It seems to me that the experience of Howard Dean in 2004 demonstrated this influence. Recall that just prior to his early loses we had Karl Rove supposedly casually observing that Dean was who he most wanted to face in the general election, which of course was anything but a casual statement. The next thing you know we've got Democratic voters questioning if they should really vote for a guy who Rove thinks would be easy to defeat.
I maintain that Rove's quip was a classic example of reverse psychology and that Dean was the last candidate whom he wanted to have to deal with in the general. Furthermore, I still believe that Dean could have defeated Bush head-to-head. But alas we will never know who would have won that match-up.
Jan 27, '07
I am also reminded that two months before the '04 cacuses, the DM register poll (usually the best in the state) showed this:
Dick Gephardt 27% Howard Dean 20% John Kerry 15% John Edwards 5% Joe Lieberman 5% Wesley Clark 4% Dennis Kucinich 3% Carol Moseley Braun 1% Al Sharpton 1% Not sure/Uncommitted 19%
Compare that with the actual results:
Candidate No. State Delegates Percentage Potential National delegates John Kerry 1,128 37.6 20 John Edwards 954 31.8 18 Howard Dean 540 18.0 7 Richard Gephardt 318 10.6 0 Dennis Kucinich 39 01.3 0 Wesley Clark 3 00.0 0 Uncommitted 15 00.5 -
Point is that these things are notoriously unreliable and especially in caucus states it really matters very much who actually shows up. These results included about 100k Iowans who showed up, the highest turnout ever, but in a state of 3M people its nothing.
Jan 28, '07
Kari's piece reminds me while I still have hope for some of the following tickets and hopefuls:
Bernie Sanders/Sam Brownback: i.e. "the professor and the madman."
Duncan Hunter/Tom Tancredo: i.e. "dumb & dumber."
Mike Huckabee - i.e. "honey I shrunk the candidate."
Dennis Kucinich - i.e. "E.T."
Tom Vilsack - i.e. "the man from nowhere."
Jeb Bush - i.e. "Volver."
Newt Gingrich - i.e. "Because I said so."
Hillary Clinton/Nancy Pelosi - i.e. "Dreamgirls."
Mitt Romney - i.e. "Little children."
Chuck Hagel - i.e. "The departed."
Tommy Thompson - i.e. "Babel."
John McCain - i.e. "Night at the museum."
Hillary Clinton/John Edwards - i.e. "Dreamgirls."
Okay Blue Oregon....what else can you come up with?