What polls mean [View All]

[Capn Sunshine]

Kos lends his perspective to polling '07

...is Hillary running away with this thing? Let's look back to 2004 Gallup polling for some perspective.

6/12-18/2003

Lieberman 21
Gephardt 17
Kerry 13
Graham 7
Dean 7
Edwards 6
Sharpton 6
Moseley Braun 5

And get this -- Lieberman was actually slightly up from May, and up from 15 percent in March.

Let's fast forward all the way to August:

8/4-6/2003

Lieberman 23
Gephardt 13
Dean 12
Kerry 10
Edwards 5
Moseley Braun 5
Sharpton 4

Wow. But then Labor Day happened, and people started "paying attention". Then look at what happened:

9/8-10/2003

Gephardt 16
Dean 14
Lieberman 13
Kerry 12
Edwards 5
Moseley Braun 4
Sharpton 2

The whole field was shuffled around. Lieberman never recovered.

Now you want to be blown away? Look at the numbers before, then after Iowa (January 19) and New Hampshire (January 27):

1/9-11 1/29-2/1

Dean 26 14
Clark 20 9
Kerry 9 49
Lieberman 9 5
Edwards 7 13
Gephardt 7 n/a

Being a blogger has been on-the-job training for me. I was obsessive about the presidential polls in 2003. Then, as you see above, they meant squat. Kerry had 9 percent heading into Iowa. He won the thing easily. I learned my lesson.