If one looks back at the past bunch of elections, the numbers were pretty much the same and after a FORTUNE was spent in the generals.
maybe a handful of percent of voters aren’t sure six to eight months before.
Trump beats hillary by a few percent, maybe even 5.
pretty much in line with most current polls.
The unchanging polls to which you refer apply to elections where nobody cares who wins (i.e., where it doesn't matter who wins).
In elections where real voters can be engaged by the campaigns, polls before October of election year are meaningless.
3 things in politics: Money, people, the brains to know what to do with them.
Jeb’s staffers clearly lacked the latter, as did Romney’s and McCain’s staffers.
We use money (earned and unearned media), people (staffers and volunteers), and brains of candidate, and brains of staffers and volunteers in several ways.
How do we use our resources to convince others to prefer our candidate?
How do we use our resources to convince those who prefer our candidate to actually get out and vote?
Many of Trump’s supporters have a history of not voting. Many are not registered since they recently moved. How will Trump use his resources to change that reality?
Cruz faces the same reality but is trying to do something about it. Cruz is trying to build a grassroots army of volunteers who will go to friends and neighbors who are non-political and tear them away from the ball game to vote for the candidate that the friend or neighbor pushes.
Collateral impact of the Cruz effort, where it is implemented, is that Cruz like local candidates for St Rep and County Board will benefit if Cruz volunteers build a winning effort.
But Cruz volunteers are often political ideologues. Can they be trained to talk to the ball game watcher about the ball game and not bore the ball game watcher with the minutia of the Federal Reserve, or immigration?
And can the Cruz campaign build a big umbrella of volunteersd who really prefer Rand Paul or Huckabee or Santorum or someone who isn’t even running?
And can the Cruz campaign win over the Rubio people? Or will the Cruz campaign go out of its way to alienate them?