It looks to me as though she holds her own in the possibility of taking the nomination.
How quickly one forgets not to distant races like Dean, Hillary, Guiliani, Romney, etc. Often front runners are just that front runners until the race reaches the stretch and then they run out of gas very rapidly. We’ll see when it’s time to pay the piper.
This thread is that she is third, that she is not the front runner or as I said “It looks to me as though she holds her own in the possibility of taking the nomination.” or in another post “Even during this worst of the worst polling snapshot period that will likely last until she starts the first political pushback of her life at the national level, Palin is either top of the heap or in the top of the heap.”
Front runner status of the republicans that you described is usually a creation of a fawning media for the rino of their choice that runs into the problem of getting past the actual republican voters in a primary, with Palin it is the opposite, media against her, party hacks against her, republican voters liking her.
I would like to see some sources for some real hard hitting facts regarding front runner status three and a half years before an election since you find it important, do you have those?