Confessions of a Hoosier Democrat

Blogging Indiana Politics and the 2008 Presidential Race.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Contenders and Pretenders - Iowa polls

The Des Moines Register had it's first poll of the '08 season and it yielded some surprises.

Who is the front runner for the nomination? Better not crown Hillary just yet because it was fmr. Senator John Edwards who finished first in the poll. Hillary was second followed by Kerry and Vilsack. Polls this early in the campaign are just a guage of name recognition. All 4 of those people should have no problem with name recognition in Iowa. That being said it's gotta be hard for the Kerry and Vilsack camps to have such a poor showing. Kerry won Iowa in 2004, and now he finished 3rd. Vilsack's spin is trying to claim that he hasn't campaigned yet in Iowa so "No Iowan has had that opportunity with Tom Vilsack at this point..." Uhhh... come again? He's been their frackin' governor for the last 8 years! This poll clearly showed that even Iowans don't want Vilsack as President.

As for the rest of the field... Everyone else is going to need some serious cash to buy some name recognition in Iowa. The question is who has the cash and who has the ability to raise the cash. Obviously Hillary has it. Bayh has it, at last count ~$10mil in his campaign account and another $1mil in his PAC account, and we also know he's been working his ass off putting supporters in line. Warner's PAC is raising a lot of cash, but the PAC money can't be converted to Presidential Campaign money so that may be a problem, but I don't think he'll have any problems. That leaves Biden, Dodd, Feingold, Clark and Richardson (did I leave someone out?). While Feingold may be the darling of the Kos-ites, he only gathered 3% in the Register poll. Hardly close to the 40% he regularly gathers in Kos's polls. Kos may be able to raise some money for him, but will Feingold be able to match the cash totals of Sen Clinton and Sen Bayh? Personally I doubt it.

For the record...
John Edwards - 30%
Hillary Clinton - 26%
John Kerry - 12%
Tom Vilsack - 10%
Tom Daschle - 3%
Russ Feingold - 3%
Mark Warner - 3%
Evan Bayh - 2%
Wesley Clark - 2%
None/Other - 3%
Not Sure - 6%
+/- 4.9%

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