Guest Post by Anonymous Liberal
Despite the fact that it’s still 2006, there seems to be a new 2008 presidential poll released every few days. The latest, a Pew poll, reports the following results:
Republicans
Rudy Giuliani……….27%
John McCain……….26%
Condoleeza Rice…..21%
Mitt Romney………..7%
Newt Gingrinch…….6%Democrats
Hillary Clinton……..39%
Barack Obama…….23%
John Edwards……..10%
Al Gore…………….10%
John Kerry…………7%
So what does this mean? Is Hillary a lock? Is Giuliani in the driver’s seat? No and no.
The bottomline is this: these polls are all but meaningless. Perhaps nothing illustrates this point better than looking back at polls from this point in the last election cycle. For example, a Fox News poll conducted in January of 2003 (which was closer to the election than we are now) reported the following results:
Joe Lieberman……29%
Dick Gephardt……15%
John Kerry………..13%
John Edwards…….8%
Al Sharpton……….5%
Howard Dean……..2%
In fact, throughout 2002 and much of 2003, Joe Lieberman led in virtually every poll. Did that mean that Lieberman had some deep base of support among Democratic primary voters? Of course not. All this reflected was the fact that Lieberman had the highest name recognition of anyone in the field by virtue of his status as the Vice Presidential candidate in 2000.
Most primary voters don’t really start to pay attention until much closer to the election. They don’t know who many of the candidates are, and even when they do, they often don’t know much about them.
Take Rudy Giuliani, for example. He polls well because most people know who he is. But I suspect most Republican voters don’t know very much about the guy, and the more they learn, the more likely they will be to reconsider their support. Conversely, most Republican primary voters don’t know who Mitt Romney is. But, like Howard Dean in 2004, Romney may well emerge as a real contender as we get closer to the actual primaries.
The Democratic side is even more interesting. Four out of the five candidates topping the polls are people who have significant name recognition. Gore, Kerry, and Edwards are all former national candidates. And Hillary is, well, Hillary. But notice that the least well known (by far) among the five, Barack Obama, is already polling at 23%. That strikes me as far more significant than any other data point in the poll.
And, of course, you always have to be on the lookout for the person who will inevitably emerge from total obscurity to become an important player. It happens almost every cycle.
Long story short, don’t read too much into these polls.
On a final note, since this is likely to be my last guest post before Steve’s return, I just wanted to say thank you for all the thoughtful comments to my previous posts. I read each and every one of them (even though I didn’t always have time to respond). I hope you’ll stop by my site in the future and contribute there as well.
And, of course, a big thanks to Steve for inviting me to post here for a few days. It’s been a privilege.