Re: "He obviously peaked way too early..."
Maybe, maybe not. (I expect with Rudy we won't know that until FL & CA vote.)
The whole way everyone was 'measuring' who was up and who was down (before we got to where we are right now, just starting with actual voting) was by 'national polls'.
Yet, every expert out there was saying that --- at the 2006 & 2007 early stages --- the national polls were essentially MEANINGLESS... mostly merely reflecting Name Recognition and little else.
Name Recognition alone was mostly what had Hillary and Rudolph at the top of those 'national polls' for so long.
The competition over campaign contributions was another way of handicapping how the horse race was going... yet that, too, was but an imperfect measure, because of the incestuous relationship with the candidates' positioning in the 'national polls'.
Basically, the big money wanted to back 'eventual winners', and so a lot (but not all, Paul's campaign for example) of the campaign contributions were triggered off of the perceptions of 'who was going to win'. (Most of the big money crowd ain't just tossing dough out there for nothing. They hope and expect to get some sort of preferential access or pay-back from a winner).
Now that we are into 2008, and voters know a whole lot more about all of the candidates - not just a couple of Party-favorites of the 'in crowd', and the voters are getting a chance to weigh-in, the polls will begin tracking a lot closer to the voter's intent... and less off of just name recognition. |
