Polls of potential voters early in the primary season define front-runners in the race early on. At sixteen months out from next year's election, though, many voters have yet to invest much interest into researching candidates, which could play out into very skewed survey results.
As the Weekly Standard's Jay Cost points out, support in early primary polls is not always reflected once the nomination process actually rolls around. Read Cost's explanation after the break, and let us know what you think in the comments.
As Cost explains,
At this point in 2007, the Iowa caucus polls showed Barack Obama trailing Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. When it was all said and done in January 2008, Obama would pull out an eight-point victory. On the GOP side, early Iowa polls had Mitt Romney in first place, Rudy Giuliani in second, and Mike Huckabee pulling an average of less than 5 percent of the vote!
National polling from June 2007 looks just as ridiculous. At that point, Clinton had a 10- to 20-point lead over Obama, which would expand to 30-points (and more) by the fall. By June 2008, when all the primaries and caucuses were finished, the two had basically split the Democratic vote. On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani had a 10-point or greater lead over John McCain in the national polls, while Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were both polling less than 10 percent each. When it was all said and done, McCain won 47 percent of the vote, Romney and Huckabee both won a touch more than 20 percent, and Giuliani...won just 3 percent!
Especially in a field of GOP candidates considered the most open in recent history, a candidate could quickly pick up enough support to surge to the front-runner position. What do you think about the accuracy of polls taken so early in the primary season? Have you already definitively chosen the candidate you will support?
