Can Iowa Caucuses be Polled?
John Zogby asks, "Can the Iowa caucuses be polled accurately?" and then more-or-less answers the question. The premise is straightforward enough: The Iowa caucuses require voters to go to a local school, church basement, private home or similar meeting place to spend between 90 minutes and two hours to register their preference. The process is a mixture of discussion, debating, a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on December 12, 2007 08:52
Hillary Clinton Expectations Taking Media Pounding
Two reports out today offer hope to those for whom the notion of a Hillary Clinton presidency is unbearable. First, a new Zogby poll shows Clinton losing in a general election matchup against the top five Republican contenders -- and her chief rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, winning those races. Second, Mike Allen and Carrie Budoff Brown are ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 26, 2007 19:00
Ron Paul - Ralph Nader, Bill Buckley, or Howard Dean?
John Derbyshire and Andrew Sullivan see great similarity's between Ron Paul and a young William F. Buckley, Jr. John Podhoretz and Richard Fernandez, though, see more similarities between Paul and Ralph Nader. Ed Morrissey, meanwhile, thinks he's this years' Howard Dean. To the extent he's following any of those parallels, I'd go with Dean. As Derbyshire notes, Buckley's conservatism ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 7, 2007 10:17
Ron Paul Sets Online Fundraising Record
Yesterday's bid to raise $10 million in one day for Ron Paul fell well short. Paul's campaign will happily settle, I'm sure, for the $4.2 million they brought in, which is easily the most brought in on a single day of online fundraising. He'll also gladly take the outpouring of media attention. "Ron Paul Raises More Than $4.2 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 6, 2007 08:08
Obama Raising Money, Not Poll Numbers
Barack Obama is a "rock star" and is raising nearly as much money as Hillary Clinton and is spending more money on advertising in Iowa, yet he's losing ground in the polls. LAT staffer Robin Abcarian wonders how that could be. Everywhere he goes, Obama gets a Hutton Street-style welcome. Crowds coo, strain to shake his hand, get his autograph, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 29, 2007 10:10
Breaking News: Candidates Criticizing Each Other
I just received a CNN Breaking News Alert: GOP candidates breaking Reagan's 11th commandment. Forget the pleasantries. The criticism grows sharper by the day in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The reason: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson are bunched at the top with voting to begin in just a matter of weeks. "We're ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 16, 2007 09:23
Campaign Polls: All Politics is Local?
Rudy Giuliani is leading the Republican race by a wide margin and Mitt Romney is in a distant fourth. Hillary Clinton is dominating the Democratic field with Barack Obama a distant second and nobody else even close. That's the conventional wisdom as reinforced by the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Yet, quite a few serious analysts think Mitt Romney ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 12, 2007 06:28
Dean Fights Florida on Primary Move
Howard Dean is threatening to not count Florida's delegates if it moves its primary to January 29. DNC Chairman Howard Dean continues to wield the threat of sanctions that would effectively bar Florida delegates from participating in the party’s 2008 convention if the primary is staged on Jan. 29. He reiterated this Tuesday in assuaging party activists from New Hampshire, who ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 14, 2007 06:24
On the Iowa Caucuses
Cross-posted from PoliBlog: There is much romanticism about the Iowa Caucuses and its exercise in "grassroots" democracy and its active nature (people meeting together, discussing and voting rather than passively standing in line, filling out a ballot and going home). Somehow the idea that candidates vying for the chance to compete for one of the most powerful offices in the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 7, 2007 11:01
Best of OTB - May 22, 2003
Two posts stand out from my stroll down memory lane of four years ago (a rather light posting day): "MUSICAL HANGING CHADS?" examines a scandal in the voting in the "American Idol" final, in which Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken by a slim margin. In "HANDICAPPING 2004," I rebut the extant conventional wisdom that President Bush was a "shoe-in" for re-election because ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 22, 2007 19:00
