Politico: Another take on the polls.

[illinoisprogressive]

Very interesting look at the polling so far and for the most part I would agree. Except I think Edwards is stronger than many think.


From "Rashomon," who likes Obama, in the comments section:

Probably a more revealing question to ask is which campaign, if asked in December 2006, would take their position today? In other words, which campaign is happiest with their positioning right now?

To me, the clear answer is Obama.

There's no way Hillary's camp would be happy with where she is.

Edwards is doing okay...but he's running the 2004 campaign. It remains to be seen if that's the right strategy this cycle. One thing against him...he's not the Howard Dean of this cycle. No one is. Another revealing meta comment...who's driving the underlying pace of the campaign?

Who's running the race THEY want to? So far, also Obama.

He forced Hillary to jump in way before she wanted to and she's been playing defense ever since. The constant harping on polling by Mark Penn is a good example of this...you ever see the Obama camp trumpet a strong poll?

Obama's also stretching out the donor pool to younger professionals...and Hillary is playing catch-up there too. Obama has also done a good job defusing the Edwards anti-war challenge.

If I was running Obama's campaign, the two most important things to do in the first half of the year were 1) raise money 2) deflate expectations. Done and done. Now, with a strong Q2 number, kick off the late summer-early fall drive to the front of the polls and build the early-state infrastructure to bring in the gold.

One nice thing about politics: We will, in fact, find out.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/index.html