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Sun. Jan 25, 2004

Polls, Trends, and the Primary Schedule

Polls, Trends, and the Primary Schedule – We learned in Iowa that polls don’t always tell the whole story. Of course, the ”experts” say that will be less true with New Hampshire, as there is a solid background on the likely voters, and a long track record for the pollers.

OK, whatever. They are what we have for now, and the latest is pretty interesting: ”Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry has surged to the head of the pack of democratic presidential hopefuls, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, commanding 30 percent of support from registered Democrats, up from 11 percent two weeks ago. And for the first time in the poll’s history a Democrat is enjoying a marginal advantage over President George W. Bush. In a hypothetical face-off, Kerry commanded a three-point lead over the president. Dean’s support among registered and likely Democrats, meanwhile, has been cut in half, to 12 percent. That puts him in three-way tie for second place in the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary with retired Gen. Wesley Clark (12 percent) and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (13 percent).”

It’s just one poll, but the figures on a Kerry-Bush face off are backed up by this more generic response: ”Overall, 52 percent of those polled by NEWSWEEK say they would not like to see Bush serve a second term, compared to 44 percent who want to see him win again in November.”

So two pieces of recent Conventional Wisdom have bit the dust. It’s still a long time until November, but it seems clear that Bush is not the invulnerable Commander-in-Chief most assumed he’d be … if the Democrats can just offer up the right alternative. It also seems clear that not only is Dean no longer the presumed Democratic nominee, it’s become a real horse race between three to four contenders.

How many other ”political facts” that we now assume to be true will be proven wrong in the next 10 months?

Despite the inherent softness of poll numbers drawn from samples almost half too small (until you poll 1,000 people, I’m hesitant to read much into it), the ARG Democratic Tracking poll is quite interesting to me. But then I’m a numbers kind of guy.

Unfortunately, their sample sizes are way under 1,000, but that is somewhat redeemed by the tracking nature of the poll. Over the course of the 8 days covered, over 5,000 people were polled, and the trends are clear. A lot of people want to make big noise about the trend from one day to the next, but that’s, again, a bit soft for me. However, if you look at the beginning, mid point, and end of the eight day period, I think you get some solid information.

It may be an overly simple analysis, but it left me with some impressions. As potential voters leave the camp of one Guy From Next Door (Dean), it appears many of them sided with the other Guy From Next Door (Kerry). And as the number of undecideds drop, Edwards goes up. With 8% still undecided and a dead heat for second place, it’s those votes that will determine who leaves New Hampshire with that not-quite-blinding second place glow.

Clark (and Lieberman), who expected to make hay in New Hampshire as the alternative to a Dean campaign that everyone assumed would come out of Iowa on top, has been worse than dead in the water. At a time when the General’s Strategy envisioned a fast rising tide as the One Obvious Alternative, instead his numbers are on a slow decline. Lieberman is in a similar state. The voters they thought would be looking to them as an alternative to Dean have found there are other preferable alternatives they perhaps did not expect to be ”viable” (Kerry and Edwards).

Once again, the small state of New Hampshire gets to wield disproportionate influence. But you can’t really blame that on the people who live there. It’s the Democrats who have front loaded the primary schedule. In 2000, the span between the Iowa Caucuses and the first primaries after New Hampshire was 6 weeks. This year, it’s 15 days.

As Howard Dean can tell you, if your campaign takes a hit or stumbles, you eat a lot of time with ”damage control,” and it’s very hard to recover and get back on message before the next group of voters weighs in a week later. This year, by March 9, a mere 7 weeks after the Iowa Caucuses, more than 60% of the country will have cast their vote.

At the same time, this is not ”winner take all,” each state’s delegates are allocated proportionally to the percentage of the vote the candidate received. So an unexpected bad showing in one state just means a few less delegates … not the whole state’s block. In a close battle like we’re seeing now, this has the potential of extending the race well into March (in effect, the ”back half” of the primary schedule), and as the campaigns of the surviving candidates have to spread their resources across dozens of states, money becomes a real factor.

Who has got the financial stamina to blanket 32 states over the next 42 days? Can the candidates take advantage of their successes quickly enough? Whomever is deemed the ”winner” in New Hampshire must still fund a hard 6 weeks of campaigning during which dozens of states will be voting. Incredibly expensive, and you could argue only Dean currently comes close to having the organization and money at hand for that task. They’ll all need to convert their votes into contributions very fast, or die on the vine.

But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. As we saw in Iowa, an unexpected outcome can completely churn all the previous Conventional Wisdom. And except for the citizens of New Hampshire, all we can do is sit back and watch.

And maybe go out on a limb with a prediction: Kerry – 35%, Edwards – 20%, Dean – 19%, Clark – 17%, Lieberman – 7%, Kucinich – 1%. Come back Tuesday night and tell me how wrong I was.