I would wait for a less bias poll then a Repub. poll as Ras.

Barring some disaster, I think Huckabee will soon emerge as a clear national favorite on the GOP side. He has a lot of understated strengths and a calm, friendly presence that's a bit disarming. Above all, he seems genuine, and people will rally behind him because of it. I've been impressed thus far with his response to the pardoning "scandal" and I don't think it will hurt him.

Lambert: "The poll, conducted before the Wayne Dumond story gained traction in the media,...."

Has it actually gotten traction in the mainstream media? I haven't seen any mention of it in CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, networks etc.

December 8, 2003 - Iowa:

Dean: 29%
Gephardt: 21%
Kerry: 18%
Edwards: 5%
(based on Pew Poll)

Actual Results:
Kerry: 38%
Edwards: 32%
Dean: 18%
Gephardt: 11%

December 3, 2003 - New Hampshire:
Dean: 45%
Kerry: 13%
Clark: 11%
Edwards: 3%
(based on ARG poll)

Actual Results:
Kerry: 38%
Dean: 26%
Clark: 12%
Edwards: 12%

Sticky McGee

Not to be too harsh, but its rather foolish to post poll results from Dec 3rd 03, since the actual primaries were held later that year than they were this year.

Iowa was held Jan 19th, not January 3rd. The NH primary, IIRC, was held on Jan 27th.

One also has to consider that the last two weeks of the primaries will be over the holidays, when the hardcore campaigning will probably take a backset to more positive stuff.

So, if real campaigning ends, say, Dec 20th, then we're only 2 weeks away from that. On Dec 3rd, 2003, the primary was still 6 weeks away, with 4 weeks of hard campaigning.

The equivalent would be, then, a poll in Mid-Nov...when Clinton was still consider the front-runner not only nationally but also in Iowa.

Just thought I'd point that out.

Wayne Dumond has already gained huge traction, and it's only going to get worse for Huckabee b/c his response was to tell a lie (I didn't try to persuade parole board) THAT ALREADY HAS BEEN PROVEN FALSE 5 YEARS AGO and again YESTERDAY.

Dumb, dumb, dumb response. Contrition and admitting mistake would have been the only chance they had. They opted to lie, try to brazen it out, and attack the messenger. Very JV.

Romney supporters will figure out how to use it without fingerprints. It is going to swamp Huckabee, and to be honest, it probably should. It's highly questionable judgment at the time, blinded by just plain irrational and dumb hatred for Bill Clinton, and a highly dishonest response.

I wonder who will land the first interviews with the relatives of the murder victims? With his earlier rape victims? Maybe Larry King? Barbara Walters? Elizabeth Hasselbeck?

Hillary, Barack and John all have one dumb thing in common: They've bought into the idea that a campaign proposal to eliminate the bank-based federal student loan program is an excellent applause line, regardless of whether it makes sense.

As every day passes it makes less and less sense.

Inside Higher Ed yesterday broke a story that shows that it cost the government less to guarantee loans made by those big, bad banks than to have the government lend the money directly.

Blasphemy, you say. As Casey Stengel used to say, you can look up.

I dunno about the whole "conservative bias" of Rasmussen. Is it possible they have systematic aberrations in the way they poll, such that the population they poll or the way they model that population is off? Sure. But suggesting that they get only older/more conservative responses is kinda misguided--the numbers we see aren't raw numbers. They're weighted by demograph to fit likely-voter models that are unique to each polling firm.

Just like ARG likely doesn't have a "Clinton bias" as some have contended so much as they perhaps model their likely voter in a way that, at times, favored Clinton. But if Obama, for example, makes headway in the specific demographs that ARG favors while not actually making much headway overall, or loses ground in other voting blocs, that could be reflected as a "rise" for him in ARG while in reality he's stagnant.

An easy way to imagine that happening would be if, say, their likely voter model was too expansive and included too many inactive, politically-unaware "voters" who are effected more by horserace coverage than campaigns. If that's the case, then Clinton should be expected to have a lead through the summer and fall as she was being touted as dominating debates and being the clear front-runner. That means ARG would show her leading regardless of hard-counts or committed supporters or excitement among plugged-in Dems. Now that Obama is getting positive press and Clinton is not, then, ARG would show a rise for him (in this hypothetical) even though perhaps the people who are preferring him over Clinton now are the type of people who don't vote at all, and thus don't matter anyway.

Who knows?

Or maybe Rasumussen has their likely voter model right, but the way they phrase questions tilts voters. Or maybe they're particularly good and most polling firms aren't. Or maybe a statistical analysis would show that they actually don't differ greatly from other polls, overall.

But I'm wary of anecdotes like that. The only thing I know is that pollster.com did a statistical analysis of ARG and found that it did indeed seem to favor Clinton over other polls. Worth noting that when people mention that, its not anecdotal, its been statistically demonstrated.

Wow - We may really have Obama vs Huckabee in the general election. Imagine how different a race that is from Clinton vs Giuliani! Two likable candidates. The christian right will go to Huckabee - where will the non-Christian right go? Do they become the demographic without a candidate? Does Obama's reasonableness and judgment then attract them?

One thought about this: when was the last time that a front-runner suffered the kind of drops that both Clinton and Giuliani have endured in the last couple weeks, then came back to win the nomination?

I guess both Gore and Bush went through something like this in 2000. As I well remember, Bradley led Gore for much of late '99 and into 2000, and McCain of course whomped Bush in New Hampshire and then seemed like he was closing in SC until Rove, Ralph Reed and the rest of the accursed bastards who gave us the W.P.E. slimed him to political doom.

But they had five weeks between NH and SC to reverse course and reassert Bush's institutional strength. Neither of the 2007 front-runners have anywhere near as unanimous backing from their parties' power centers, and of course the calendar is much more front-loaded this year.

It's nowhere near over and InevitaBillary at least is still a clear front-runner (though I wonder if, given how little personal warmth there seems to be for her outside of the HillBots, she can bounce back). But if somehow Clinton, whom I deplore, and Giuliani, whom I outright detest, dropped out on the same day, I can't imagine a bigger dose of political schadenfreude short of Bush getting frog-marched to The Hague.

Also in the case of Iowa the peculiar way of voting can create some wild swings.

But the polls do point to a significant point. That much of the HRC hype was been just that. Her support has always been tentative not because of the other candidates necessarily. But because the voters want more than she is offering. I still have been "moved" by any of the candidates. The closest is Edwards, but more because my personal issues line up with his closest.
Upthread there are multiple cautionary references to Kerrys' surge and Deans decline. My recollection is the party machine lifted Kerry while rolling over Dean, more than any "everyman" groundswell.

Interesting that the ARG poll taken just a few days earlier doesn't seem to have picked up any particular surge for Obama. The 45/21 Clinton/Obama margin in ARG's 11/26-29 poll was essentially unchanged from the 41/19 they measured at the end of October.

Edwards did look to be off quite a bit in their last one though, versus the one bbefore, and there does seems to be some tendency in SC for one of them to go up when the other goes down. But I also note that the Rasmussen poll looks to have been done over two nights instead of three for some reason, and has a considerably smaller sample size than the ARG poll. So you might want to keep that in mind.

Edwards won big in SC in 2004 though and Obama has polled ahead there or tied for the lead several times previously this year. I would regard this state as potentially winnable for either of them, perhaps even independently of how IA and/or NH turn out.

CalD,

I'm not quite sure what is going on with the ARG polls. In late July they had Obama leading when the other closest-in-time polls had Clinton ahead. In late September they had converged to show around the same Clinton lead as other polls, but then in late October they got a higher Clinton lead than other polls, and so again in their late November poll.

All of which does not mean ARG is wrong (and certainly they have not been, say, consistently pro-Clinton or anti-Obama). But ARG does seem to be indicating a different dynamic than the other polls taken over the last few months.

Anyway, as usual my proposal is just look at the aggregates--hence my lament there has not been more polling until recently.

Leye wrote on December 6, 2007 4:24 PM:

It is beginning to seem that Obama will win all the early states - NH, Iowa and SC. The question is will it translate to wins in the big states? The democratic race will be extremely interesting.

Good question that none other than Dick Morris The Triangulator-in-Chief tackles today in piece for Rasmussen. He thinks, as I do but for a different reason, that Clinton will ultimately prevail even if she loses ALL the early states. He also thinks Rudy would prevail in the GOP side [I doubt it -- he is too socially liberal for that party]. Here's the Dick's conclusion:

But recover they both likely will. Remember how Gary Hart beat Mondale in New Hampshire in 1984 and Mondale came back to win? And how Paul Tsongas beat Clinton there in 1992 and Clinton eventually won? And how McCain defeated Bush in New Hampshire in 2000 but how Bush came back to win? Different year. New candidates. Same deal.

Of course none of those are the same scenario as Leye laid out.

Mondale won in Iowa before Hart won in NH. Favorite son Harkin won in Iowa before Tsongas (from neighboring Massachusetts) won in NH. Bush won in Iowa before McCain won in NH.

What Leye is hypothesizing is not just that Hillary Clinton lose NH after winning Iowa (like Mondale and Bush), or lose both of the early states to two different local favorites (like Bill Clinton losing to Harkin and Tsongas). Rather, Leye is hypothesizing the same person winning both Iowa and NH (and SC to boot).

The last non-incumbents to win both Iowa and NH were Kerry (2004), Gore (2000), and Carter (1976--although technically "uncommitted" won Iowa), who all went on to win the nomination. Note the lack of Republicans (which says something about their party, but more about the numbers of incumbents that have been running over that time).

The last non-incumbent to win both Iowa and NH and not win the nomination was Muskie in 1972, so it is possible for such a person to lose. But in 1972, Muskie was actually the frontrunner, and McGovern (the eventual winner) the dark horse. Even though McGovern lost Iowa, his surprisingly strong second place in Iowa--plus a lot of dirty tricks from Nixon--led to an even closer second place finish in NH, and that momentum eventually allowed McGovern to pull off the upset.

None of that provides a particularly comforting analogy if Clinton loses both Iowa and NH to one person. Which, by the way, provides a good explanation of why she is attacking Obama but ignoring Edwards: she could lose to Edwards in Iowa and even then lose to Obama in NH, and perhaps still hope to win (ala Bill in 1992). But it will likely be much harder for her to recover if the same person wins both.

You have much more credibility than tricky dick, so why deflate from your argument by citing him? Too funny.

LOL. Well, thanks, Michael A! Listening to you, I never would've thought that you think I have any credibility! You should be thanking me for injecting "strange" views into the debate. It just goes to show you how people can start on opposite sides, and reach the same conclusion by whatever logical or illogical mental twists...

I loathe Morris, btw.

DTM, I have no idea who half the people are who have polled SC this year and some of the names I do recognize I tend to regard as pretty low-grade sources in general. ARG polls I at least know are professionally conducted using human interviewers and sampling methods that comply with accepted industry best practices. No idea what their house effect due to likely voter screens and whatnot might be for SC, but the fact that they've done a number of polls using the same methodology means they should be useful for gauging trends.

Just keep in mind that the flip side of the 95% confidence interval means that you kind of expect about one poll in 20 to be a little out to lunch. So in any set of 10 or more polls, the probability that one will be off the mark by more than the MoE exceeds 0.5. Also, Edwards and Obama both have some natural advantages in SC on paper at least, so it would not be surprising in general to see a some volatility in this race.

Good to see dcshungu out for a "spin." The other Hillary staffers must be at Thursday happy hour, drowning their sorrows. Cheers pacc, colonpowwow, DemAC. But, but, but Hillary planned to lose big leads in key states, it all part of her seasoned, highly professional, flawless, chickens-with-their-heads-cut-off, Keystone Kops, campaign. I would be hiding with a beer too, if Hillary was my boss.

Anonymous,
I surely can’t speak for any staffers on any campaign but I have a hard time figuring out any collective sorrows that the Hillary Clinton campaign would like to drown. Now, if you want to put all your belief in Obama on this single Rasmussen poll, you’re more than welcome.

PS
Cheers!!!
DS

dcshungu wrote: [The Dick] thinks, as I do but for a different reason, that Clinton will ultimately prevail even if she loses ALL the early states. […]

Fully aware that the two months to 5. February are equal to several lifetimes in politics: Hillary Clinton loses in all early states? Nope, not happening. Hillary Clinton is certainly no Mondale and she is much much stronger both in organization and support than Bill Clinton in ’92.

DemAC, I said nothing about Obama. I was just commenting on how Hillary's campaign, with a nice dose of hysteria and no little help from Bill, is imploding. Get those resumes pollished Hillary crew, the GOP always needs corporate-serving spinisters.