As we head into this season of debates and campaigns, it’s good to look back and examine where we are in this process. Here is a link to a Washington Post article from early August 2007 about the poll numbers in Iowa:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/04/AR2007080401380_pf.html
From this article, we can see that the most recent poll numbers were:
Mitt Romney 26%
Rudy Giuliani 14%
Fred Thompson 13%
Mike Huckabee 8%
John McCain 8%
Sam Brownback 5%
Tom Tancredo 5%
Tommy Thompson 4%
Ron Paul 2%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Now this was 5 months before the Caucus. The results of the caucus were:
Mike Huckabee 34.4% (an increase of 26.4% from the August poll)
Mitt Romney 25.2% (minus 0.8%)
Fred Thompson 13.4% (increase of 0.4%)
John McCain 13.0% (increase of 5%)
Ron Paul 9.9% (increase of 7.9%)
Rudy Giuliani 3.4% (minus 10.6%)
Wow! McCain wasn’t even making waves during the August poll and he came in fourth in the actual vote in Iowa. And yet he was the winner of the nomination.
Point is, all things are in flux now. Work hard for your choice. Be positive about why people should support your guy instead of just taking shots at everyone else.
Note that there were 10 candidates in August and only 6 by the time Iowa voted. We have 17 candidates now, I believe, but we will be down to around 6 to 8 by the time Iowa votes. Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. That clears the way for a McCain or Romney to sweep up the splinters and win the nomination.
Awesome post! Thanks!