Looks Like Big Trouble Ahead for Clinton and Obama.

[Tom Rinaldo]

The recent performances by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in national opinion polls measuring the support potential Democratic Party Candidates for President currently have, is enough to set off warning bells in both of their camps. That’s because their early poll results are grim. Consider the facts; Clinton and Obama are far and away the current front runners for the 2008 Democratic nomination. This is very bad news indeed for the supporters of these candidates, as history clearly indicates. Let’s stroll back in time to review a few previous hotly contested Democratic Presidential nomination contests.

On November 13, 2002, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, 32% of Democrats thought Al Gore should be the 2008 Democratic nominee, followed by 22 percent for Hillary Clinton, 11 percent for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and 8 percent each for Senator Joe Lieberman, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, and Missouri U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, with 4 percent supporting North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Of course those standings changed as the election drew closer. By the time a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll was taken in January 2003, Gore, Clinton and Daschle were all off the 2004 list. The new front runners were Lieberman at 25% and Gephardt at 17%, followed by Kerry at 14%, Edwards at 7%, Graham at 6%, and Dean at 3%.

We all know how it turned out; Gore, Clinton and Daschle all chose not to run while Howard Dean topped the polls in early January 2004, and Lieberman and Gephardt both followed up on their early front runner status with an early crash and burn in the primaries.

For 2000 sitting VP Al Gore was always the Democratic favorite and was not denied, but 1992 was a different story. That time the race was wide open, and we remember who won it, but the Gallop poll from December of 2001 didn’t exactly show Bill Clinton as a front runner. Topping the polls then for Democrats was Mario Cuomo at 32%, followed by Jerry Brown at 15%. Doug Wilder came next at 9%, Bob Kerry was at 8%, then Tom Harkin at 7%, with Bill Clinton coming in 6th at 6%.

While Walt Mondale had opposition for the nomination in 1984, as a former Democratic VP he remained the favorite from start to finish, but 1988 was another one of those wide open years. A Gallop poll from Mid January 1988, not long before the Iowa caucus, showed Gary Hart as the odds on favorite to win the Democratic nomination, polling at 25% nationally, followed by Jesse Jackson at 19%. Michael Dukakis lagged at 10%. When the results from Iowa were in, Dukakis came in 3rd there, trailing Representative Dick Gephardt and Senator Paul Simon from Illinois.

So what about 1976, the year Jimmy Carter was elected President? Jimmy was a slow starter that year. A Gallop poll from early January 1976 had Jimmy Carter polling at only 4%. The front runners at the time were Hubert Humphrey at 29% and George Wallace at 20%. Surely though for 1972, with protests against the Viet Nam War filling the streets, George McGovern must have been a front runner for the Democratic nomination. Actually no he wasn’t. In Gallop’s late December 1971 poll McGovern was polling in 4th place at 5%. The front runners for the nomination at that point were Ted Kennedy at 32%, Ed Muskie at 25%, and Hubert Humphrey at 19%.

In reviewing the results from prior years it looks to me like leading in an early Democratic Presidential preference poll is a fate you should want to wish on your worst enemy. In January 2004, the Gallop organization even ran a story on the fate of front runners for the Democratic Presidential nomination, which made researching this piece a whole lot easier for me since it’s hard to find archived poll results prior to 2000 without paying a fee to access them. For the curious, here’s a snippet and a link:


January 06, 2004
History Shows January Front-runner Often Does Not Win Democratic Nomination

Only 4 out of 10 January leaders over last half-century have won nomination

by Frank Newport and Joseph Carroll
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- The presidential election primary season is upon us, with the Iowa caucus now less than two weeks away, and with the high visibility New Hampshire primary taking place in only three weeks, on Jan. 27. Not a single vote has yet been cast, but former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has already been anointed the front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination (and is on the cover of both TIME and Newsweek magazines this week) -- based in large part on his strong showing in recent public opinion polls at both the national and state level.
But just how predictive is this type of strength in early national polling in terms of a candidate's chances of actually winning the Democratic nomination?

There have been 10 races over the last 50 years in which there was a significant contest for the Democratic nomination: 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 2000. (The omitted years of 1964, 1980, and 1996 were ones in which a Democratic incumbent president ran for re-election with little or no opposition.)
http://tinyurl.com/yd9uql


Of course with Howard Dean coming up short in 2004, Gallop’s running tally for Democratic front runners in the December or January preceding a Presidential Election who actually went on to win the nomination should be revised to 4 out of 11 (excluding incumbent Democratic Presidents running for reelection). And if you also omit Al Gore and Walter Mondale in those tallies (our two nominees who had previously served as Vice President), you have to go back to 1960 to find a Democratic frontrunner heading into a Presidential election year who actually ended up winning the Democratic Presidential nomination

From all of this I conclude that the track record for early polling being able to predict an eventual Democratic Presidential nominee is staggeringly consistent in its inaccuracy. Not only has the Democratic front runner in all those years failed to actually secure the nomination, the Democrat polling in second place in December preceding an election year has always failed to win the nomination also.

I am expecting big staff shake ups from both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Early success like this can’t be tolerated if either of these potential candidates is serious about seeking the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States.

[Buzz Clik]

1. OMG! Time for the cyanide pills.

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. Yup. To quote Bob Dylan:

"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."

[thereismore]

4. I like your attitude. nt

[lancdem]

5. lol

[LWolf]

3. Oh, darn.

:evilgrin:

Looks like the nominee will have to be found elsewhere.

[Spearman87]

6. An interesting difference between Dem and Rep

nomination races that somebody pointed out today. Reps typically have an early leader a long ways out from the election, and the party and the base gets behind him. Dems typically have an early strong leader, only to have him(/her?) falter down the line and somebody else surges from behind to take the lead. I guess Howard Dean is the most recent "hot" candidate who surged well out from the election only to falter in crunch time.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. True, but Howard Dean was second wave surge.

At this stage in the 2004 Election cycle, with the first Primaries a year away, Dean was only polling at 3%. That's the range that Clark and Biden are at now. Lieberman and Gephardt were the earlier "strong candidate" surgers.

[Tom Rinaldo]

10. 3% was also the level John Edwards was at in December of 2003...

...a month before the Iowa caucus. To say that a lot can happen between now and the 2008 primary season is a bit of an understatement.

[hijinx87]

8. rethugs are totally anal about the whole thing

they almost invariably go with whoever ran second last time. if the
past is prologue once again, it will be mccain.

[blm]

9. Democratic voters like to hear their candidates debate and answer tough questions.

They do NOT like the corporate media controlling every aspect of the Dem primary contest, as they have tried to do since 2000.

[bigdarryl]

14. And they hate being told by the media who is a front runner and who to vote for

[blm]

15. That's what separates us from the mentality of GOPs who trust their authoritarians

to make decisions for them.

[Tom Rinaldo]

16. Not as much seperates us as I would like in that regard

The media is getting much more overt at packaging and selling chosen political figures to the public, both Democrats and Republicans. Ever since media deregulation it is getting much harder for truly independent voices to be heard. But it seems Democratic voters are still untamed enough to pick out one or two dark horses each presidential election cycle to give significant support to. I doubt that will change this time either.

[blm]

18. Yes, it all CAN come down to media portrayals - but, that's why we fight, isn't it?

We haven't been able to depend on the strength of the Dem party to do the fighting since the mid90s, so we've had to independently develop our fighting chops.

Since Dean took over the DNC and has been rebuilding the crucial party infrstructure in the neglected states, we have a better chance at adding to the debate. In 2004, the team on the ground for Kerry and his debate performances HAD to propel him, since the media certainly did its best to kill him off in the months leading up to Iowa.

Too bad he was stuck with a weak national party infrastructure with little organization to tap into once he became the nominee.

[A Simple Game]

13. " only to falter in crunch time."

I truely believe that Dean had a lot of help from the media in his "faltering".

[KoKo]

11. Why "big staff shake ups from both Clinton and Obama" because they

are leading? :shrug:

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. Gentle humor; nothing more, nothing less n/t

[wisteria]

17. yep, Polls mean very little at this point. n/t