The American Research Group daily tracking poll in New Hampshire has become a must-read. Today’s was particularly interesting, but not just because of the data.
First, let’s look at the numbers. Obviously, it’s more good news for Wesley Clark.
Dean — 35%
Clark — 20%
Kerry — 11%
This is a quick and dramatic turn of events. Just a week ago, Dean was at 39%, Kerry was in second with 14%, and Clark was third at 12%. Not only has Clark solidified — for now — his second place position, but all of a sudden, he’s trailing frontrunner Howard Dean by only 15 points, instead of 27 points. If this keeps up, New Hampshire could become very interesting.
There’s an obvious explanation for Clark’s upward movement in the Granite State, beyond his general appeal: he’s the only serious candidate there. Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, and Edwards are focused intently on the Iowa caucuses, held the week before the New Hampshire primary. As a result, Clark has the state all to himself and he’s obviously making the most out of it.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, consider this comment from the ARG polling analysis:
“Over the past 2 days of calling, a number of older respondents registered as undeclared voters have reported that they have received telephone calls from a campaign informing them that they will not be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary because they missed the deadline to switch parties. A respondent discovered, however, that when she told the caller that she was thinking about voting for Howard Dean, the caller told her that she would be eligible to vote.”
This is a pretty significant development, if this means what I think it means.
I don’t want to over-interpret the ARG analysis, but it sounds as if they’re suggesting that the Dean campaign is targeting elderly voters in New Hampshire with deceptive push polls, in which Dean supporters are told they can vote on the 27th and others are told they can’t. Not incidentally, polls are showing that elderly voters are leaning towards Clark and away from Dean.
And yet, the ARG analysis is unclear. There’s no such thing as being “registered as undeclared,” and there’s no explanation as to how ARG learned of these comments.
But if the public learns that the Dean camp has, indeed, been calling old folks with false information about their voter status, Dean is going to need an awfully good explanation. Either way, I’m anxious to learn more about this and I’ll keep you posted. (And if my key New Hampshire source — you know who you are — has any details about this, I hope he’ll let me know…)