What this means is that Hillary would benefit immensely if current primary date jockeying results in New Hampshire leapfrogging Iowa to become the first state.

IF her lead holds.

The vote is still a lifetime away.

Best, Terry

"What this means is" predicting January 2008 primary results based on August 2007 polls is highly speculative.

Howard Dean was "surging" in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, with Gephardt second and Kerry a distant third in August 2003. Although Kerry eventually "won" the nomination, none became president. Sobering to think about.

I don't think [Obama] cratered in the last few days

I do.

Obama been swiftboated.

Dodd and Biden are now claiming they really didn't mean nothing by their attacks. Hillary still wants everybody to get along and get in line, which a lot of sheep seem to be doing.

You see this irresponsible, cheap huckster, who wants to pal around with Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro while he is invading Pakistan in order to turn Pakistan over to the Islamofascists, has to be stopped. Only a strong woman, who won't blink at using H-bombs on terrorists to stop this nefarious plot, can do the job.

Near as I can tell, that is the current story line.

Oh yeah, Hillary is for good old-fashioned American lobbyists who keep the American dream alive while Obama only takes their money under the table while squeezing widows and orphans out of their grocery and rent money.

Did I miss anything?

Best, Terry

sounds just like what Fox news, Coulter, Malkin, Limbaugh and O'reielly have been saying these past few days along with Tucker, Matthews and CNN for good measure.

How do you know? :-) :-) :-)

Don't hit me. I am old and stupid. LOL!

Thanks for the backup.

Best, Terry

Okay, WTF?

Take a look at the mother of all polling sites from whence this came:

http://www.pollster.com/08-NH-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

This "new" poll of 502 "likely New Hampshire primary voters" was actually taken July 24 - 26, but it wasn't released until the 7th and is reported here as being released on the 10th.

Anyway, oddly (not to say suspiciously) delayed release date to one side for the moment, this supposedly "new" poll shows Hillary 36%, Edwards 15% and Obama at 19%. However, an ARG poll of "likely New Hampshire primary voters" taken later, on July 26 - 30, and released (and reported here) on July 31 has it Hillary 31%, Edwards 14% and Obama 31%.

So, to begin the list of WTF's:

WTF is up with reporting this as a "new" poll?

WTF is up with making sweeping statments about Hillary's massive lead in NH on the basis of this "new" poll while ignoring the fact that it is wildly at odds with one that was conducted a bit later, had a larger sample and shows Obama tied with Hillary, yet shows no variance on Edwards? Isn't that worth a chin stroke and a "hmmm" at the very least? (Oh, and lets not forget that ARG's national polls are reputed, through some quirk of sample selection, to show Hillary doing better nationally than other polls do.)

WTF is up with these guys sitting on this data for close to two weeks now and then releasing it, along with their own pontifications, as if its new data?

And . . .

WTF is up with this wild variance between the two polls which were at least close in time?

C'mon, at the very least, doesn't this kind of undermine Eric's commentary?

A valuable post. Thanks. I think Eric Kleefeld's error may have been innocent, though. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt ... once. You are absolutely right, however, that before he or Greg Sargent tries to actually make a full-blown post out of a single poll, they should actually study the details, like: When was it taken?

Dang it all, leon, you shot this old geezer's war stories all to hell. Now I will have to make up some new ones.

Just a few minutes from us is the site of the Battle of Bloody Creek. Not many people have seen it. Though it is in New York like our fine Senator running to be president, I bet she never heard of it.

Not much of a creek really. Didn't take the bodies of many colonials to make the creek bloody when they were massacred as they stopped to get water. Families living around here still remember the dead relatives from long ago.

Funny thing about that though. The colonials won that battle. First battle ever won in the Revolutionary War. Made it kinda important because the world changed that day forever.

Maybe the same thing happened when Hillary tried to stomp on another band of rag tag rebels with her armies of lobbyists and courtiers.

Wouldn't that be something? Change is sometimes real good.

Best, Terry

Hillary bashing and O-Bomb-A cheerleading doesn't change the fact that Clinton operation is keeping her at the top of ALL national Dem. primary polls and most every single state poll, as well.

Darn.

On a brighter note, I read over at The Ostroy Report that Al Gore has publically said he may re-enter politics.

Something does smell, doesn't it. Amazing that this 'old' poll brought out as a 'new poll' was a joint endeavor between a Dem pollster and a Rep pollster. WTF does that mean.....collusion of bi-partisan insiders to slant the news for 'insider' candidates?

That the poll [accuracy is another question] was held, then 'time' released as 'new' doesn't surprise me. In another thread, I wondered aloud why poll headlines often reminded me of the phenomenon of 'terror alerts' being hurried out alongside bad news for the Bush team. Remember, some of those 'terror alerts', when examined were old situations made to seem like new developments.

Eric, are you awake? How about an update on this?

And, again, I seem to have either given the impression that I'm spinning conspiracy theories or I've given ammo to those who do. I honestly meant that I'd be "very interested" to find out what's going on strictly in a wonky kind of way.

There is no reason to engage in speculation about Hart/McLaughlin trying to pump one candidate over another with false poll results. No one does that more than once and stays in the polling busines more than one cycle.

The fact is, however, that either Obama pulled off a double digit surge in NH in a matter of days at the end of last month, which is highly unlikely, or sombody's poll is broken. What really kills some of us is that at this stage in a campaign, the only really meaningful polls are the internal polls the candidates are doing. Those are better-kept secrets than Cheney's toothpaste preference. So, instead, the real junkies, i.e. people who write comments on blogs like this, are left to try to sift a few seeds of meaning out of polls that are mostly chaff. If one of the public polls is badly broken, it just makes the sifting harder.