All top contenders are electable

Nothing annoys me more than people arguing that one candidate is "electable" while the other isn't. I've always maintained that whoever survives the nomination process will be electable.

Zogby's latest poll provides supporting numbers:

Bush 45
Clark 35

Bush 47
Dean 37

Bush 47
Kerry 37

Bush 49
Gephardt 37

Bush 49
Lieberman 37

All of our top guys keep Bush under 50 percent, and they are all competitive despite Bush's vast incumbency advantages.

The nomination isn't about who can best beat Bush. They all can. To me, it's about process. To others, about particular issues (appeal to labor, environmental record, etc.), to others it's about the right tone and rhetoric, and still to others about personality and other subjective preferences.

Those are all fine and good reasons to pick a candidate. But "electability"? Let's put that one to rest.

Oh, and Zogby's latest national numbers (Early September numbers in parenthesis):

Not sure 43 (38)
Clark 12 (3)
Dean 12 (16)
Kerry 7 (13)
Gephardt 6 (8)
Lieberman 5 (12)
Sharpton 4 (2)
Braun 4 (2)
Edwards 2 (3)
Graham 1 (0)
Kucinich 1 (1)

This poll suggests that Clark's entrance has not only sucked support from Dean, Kerry, and Lieberman (with Gep remaining relatively unscarred), but that it has also pushed people back into that massive "undecided" column.

To be honest, this is the kind of result I expected to see after Clark announced, not what most other polls have shown (Gephardt getting pummeled, everyone else relatively unscathed). That's not to say this poll is correct and the others are wrong. Just that it's really hard to gauge the true impact of Clark's candidacy.

Posted September 25, 2003 11:38 AM | Comments (77)