I completely agree with this
tweet from Nick Beaudrot (quite appropriate shouting is his)::
The first rule of 2012 General election polling is DO NOT TALK ABOUT GENERAL ELECTION POLLING UNTIL THE GENERAL cc @
Which was a response to Weigel's:
Obama leads potential GOP prez candidates by 5-10 points in Virginia.
If you want to know about Barack Obama's chances in 2012, I recommend two things: pay attention to his approval ratings, and pay attention to the economic results and forecasts. Really, you can completely, totally, absolutely ignore head-to-head polling matchups until Labor Day, 2012. I know, we won't, but I'll strongly urge everyone to pay no attention to such polling until at least the GOP candidate is chosen.
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Ah, but what about comparative matchups?
ReplyDeleteNaturally, we only have the results for polling after the primary, and in the presidential case, there's like 9 months between primary and election day.
But, if Candidate A beats candidates B and C in matchups, but not D, doesn't that indicate something about D versus B & C? Not predictive of the general, but suggestive about individual candidates?
I'm gonna say...you're not going to get much out of those. This early, you're going to get a lot of name recognition -- and you may get that well into the primary season.
ReplyDeleteIf I were trying to figure out which candidate matched up best against the other party, I would probably pay attention to favorable/unfavorable much more than to head-to-head matchups. Beyond polling, it's generally a safe bet that ideological extremism doesn't play well, and you could also look for signs of coalition-building skills rather than faction mobilization.
I tend to agree but I still can't help but think this is good news for President Obama. You just suffered a massive mid-term defeat after a year of 9+ unemployment and you are still leading your nearest rivals in a purplish state that looked like it was trending away from you. I would not have expected that.
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