"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Monday, January 07, 2008

Remember Florida and Ohio?
Posted by Jill | 7:47 PM
Wouldn't it be nice if Florida and Ohio weren't even close? Wouldn't it be nice if the Democratic nominee had a comfortable enough lead that the Republicans couldn't steal those states again?

Of course there's a long time between now and the November election, but as of right now, the strongest candidate against all of the Republicans in Florida and Ohio is not Barack Obama, and it's not Hillary Clinton.

It's John Edwards.

In a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling the evening after the Iowa caucus last week, Edwards leads all four Republican front-runners in Ohio and three out of the four in Florida. Obama beats the only fading candidates Giuliani and Romney, ties Huckabee, and loses to McCain in Ohio. In Florida, Edwards beats Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani, and is only behind McCain by a percentage point. Obama narrowly edges Giuliani (with little enough room that Giuliani could steal it), loses to Huckabee and McCain, and ties Romney.

Now a lot can change between now and then, and polls like this so early in the game are only indicative of a single snapshot in time. But it does make one wonder why the media have written John Edwards off so early when all the early indicators show that he's the strongest of the three front-runners against the entire Republican field.

The full poll results are here.

Labels:

4 comments
Bookmark and Share
4 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
All the early indicators? Hardly. Rasmussen shows Obama beating all of the GOP front runners in a head-to-head race.

In fact, the latest polls shows that Obama leads all candidates period:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/obama_now_seen_as_most_electable_candidate_in_either_party
1/7/08, 9:10 PM  
Blogger pjs said...
A shame your link was cut off. All I could find at Rasmussen was that "[s]ixty-six percent (66%) of Americans believe that Barack Obama is at least somewhat likely to win the White House if he is nominated by the Democratic Party." That does, indeed, lead all candidates, but it's a much different question than "who would you vote for."

I suspect that has as much or more to do with the quality of the Republican candidates and Bush fatigue as it does with support for Obama.

No doubt, a substantial percentage Americans would believe that Elmer Fudd (if not Mike Gravel) would be at least somewhat likely to be elected if the Democrats nominated him.

Interestingly enough, John Edwards isn't listed at all - not even in the sidebar, where Obama and Clinton are statistically tied amongst Democratic voters. Did Edwards poll so low as to not even rate a mention, or is Rasmussen simply ignoring him, the way the rest of the traditional media is? Or is there more detailed information in the "premium only" crosstabs?

Perhaps that was a different poll than the one you were referring to, but I was unable to locate any recent head to head matchups at Rasmussen.
1/8/08, 8:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Sigh. In my part of Florida it's all Giuliani, all the time. He's running an appalling ad which includes Benazir Bhutto and Osama bin Laden, and looks like the trailer for an apocalyptic war movie.

And it's hard to work up enthusiasm for a primary where your actual vote is meaningless. Or maybe I should be used to that by now.
1/8/08, 8:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I'm voting for John Edwards. We need someone like him to lead the fight for change. It will be a fire fight and I analyze the backgrounds of Obama and Edwards and come up with the one I think can fight the fight more effectively.
1/8/08, 9:05 AM  
Post a Comment
<< Home