Dean surges to a 22 point national lead in latest Wapo/ABC poll

[unfrigginreal]

In the Democratic race, the poll shows dramatic gains for Dean in a month that included the endorsement of former vice president Al Gore and a growing list of Democratic elected officials and the continuation of his aggressive, grassroots campaign operation.

Asked to choose among the nine candidates for the Democratic nomination, 31 percent of registered Democrats said they favored Dean, up from 20 percent a week ago and up from 15 percent in October. No other Democrat reached double digits.

Although he is known as the candidate of the antiwar Democrats, Dean draws roughly equal support from Democrats who believe that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost and from those who believe it was, another sign of his broadening support. A solid majority (60 percent) of Democrats continue to say they believe the United States should not have gone to war.

But Dean's strength against his rivals masks how little Democratic voters know about him. More than half of Democrats surveyed said they know "hardly anything" or "nothing" about Dean's experience or leadership capabilities and his positions on the issues.

The Post-ABC poll suggests that Dean's recent surge has come disproportionately from Democrats who do not closely identify with their party. In mid-October, Dean claimed the support of one in six Democratic-leaning independents and an equal proportion of party rank-and-file. Today, he gets significantly more support from independent Democrats (35 percent) than he does from party faithful (26 percent).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22493-2003Dec22.html

Breakdown Dec/(Oct)

Dean 31 (16)
Lieberman 9 (13)
Gephardt 9 (13)
Kerry 8 (8)
Clark 7 (12)
Sharpton 5 (7)
Kucinich 2 (2)
Moseley Braun - (5)
Don't Know 14 (11)
None of these 7 (7)
Would not vote 2 (2)
Other 1 (1)

[Alex146]

1. Go Dean Go!

[arcos]

2. no, that can't be right...

he can't be getting a lot of support from independent democrats! Remember he is unelectable and will not appeal to anyone outside the party base!

Oh, and he is peaking... again!

[ibegurpard]

3. Oh wow:

"Dean's recent surge has come disproportionately from Democrats who do not closely identify with their party."

Those sure sound like swing-voters.

[KittyWampus]

8. They sound Uninformed- Hence Name Recognition-Not Validation

"But Dean's strength against his rivals masks how little Democratic voters know about him. More than half of
Democrats surveyed said they know "hardly anything" or "nothing" about Dean's experience or leadership
capabilities and his positions on the issues."

[ibegurpard]

10. Yeah, like I said...swing voters.

n/t

[mouse7]

20. Uninformed sounds like 80-85% of registered voters

Please don't claim voters will become more informed later. We all know better.

You're talking about the same people who give Bush high marks for trustworthiness.

On edit: And there's the Saddam caused 9/11 connection they all believe in to.

[BootinUp]

23. your nick matched that post perfectly

:cry:

[TLM]

40. Yeah they're just too stupid to know they should support Clark, right?

Same old shit... if they do not support your guy, they're dumb and as soon as you tell them how evil Dean is, they'll all flood to your guy.


Just keep slinging that shit at Dean... seems to be working great so far.

[flpoljunkie]

4. You left out this part, Bush over Dean in head-to-head by 55%-37%!

But as a general election candidate, Dean starts well behind Bush in the public's estimation. In an early test of strength, 55 percent of those surveyed said that if the election were held today, they would vote to reelect the president and just 37 percent saying they would favor Dean. No other Democrat was tested against Bush in the Post-ABC News poll.

Dean's Democratic rivals have warned that the former governor's lack of foreign policy experience would hurt him in a general election against Bush, and when asked in the poll whether they trusted the president or Dean more to handle national security and the war on terrorism, 67 percent of the respondents said Bush and 21 percent Dean. Even on the kind of domestic issues that normally favor Democrats, such as Social Security, health care and the education, Bush bests Dean by 50 percent to 39 percent.

[ibegurpard]

6. Looks like we have some edjumacating to do!

n/t

[virtualobserver]

24. most people in the US know little of Dean

But they will soon.

[Zynx]

13. Most people don't know squat about his positions.

Bush had a similar edge over Gore at this point and we tied that thing up.

[virtualobserver]

27. and by election time, people will be more familiar with Bush's record too

this is going to be interesting.

[mouse7]

28. Dubya ONLY has 55%!

Dubya "won" a war a few months ago, got Saddam a few days ago, New Hampshire and Iowa still a month away, and a Governor from Vermont has Dubya down to 55%?

Hell, that's miraculous!

[WiseMen]

29. No Change. Dean Has been 15-25 points behind BUSH. Kerry or Clark 5-15

[JaneQPublic]

31. Not according to the latest polls. Take a look:

Dean isnt' doing too badly, considering Clark, Lieberman, and Gephardt all have much higher name recognition than does the Doctor/Governor from Vermont.

[BootinUp]

32. What are the name recognition numbers? n/t

[CMT]

30. not much different from the lead Bush had over Gore

about four years ago.

[TLM]

42. The Bush v Dean numbers will change...

just like the Clark/Kerry/Gephardt/Liberman v Dean numbers have changed.

Remeber the same foks saying Dean can't beat bush were saying Dean can't beat Lieberman, Gephardt, or Kerry when the primary race started.

[Scott Lee]

43. Guess you left out the part about the poll being about Dem candidates?

Yeah, that part. It wasn't a poll focusing on Bush/Dean match up.

[polpilot]

53. 37% represents 'dream numbers' for the doctor. Indicate a slam dunk

for Dean by Nov. '04..

Dean '04...

[BootinUp]

5. Not much agreement in polls these days

whats up with that?

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04dem.htm

[SahaleArm]

11. Depends on call distribution and sample size.

You are right the polls are a little sketchy these days but ~25% is still don't know/undecided. Look at the Newsweek versus ABC poll below.

[Myra]

19. We know what's going on; the media is pushing Dean over the finish line

This is the same ABC that turned the last democratic
debate into a long infomercial for Dean. Koppel
practically told everone to get out of the race (and he
literally told Kucinich, Sharpton, M-B they should
drop out in comments before the debate).

But Dean supporters seem completely unconcerned about the blatant
bias that debate revealed, and the grotesque misuse of the
debate format by Koppel.
Dean didn't seem much concerned about it either.

[DaisyUCSB]

7. how is the poll conducted? Does anyone know?

is it just a random phone suvey where they ask if the person is a registered democrat?

[SahaleArm]

9. Side-by-side of two polls taken on the similar days...

Source: A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted by telephone Dec. 18 - 20, 2003, 2001, among a national sample of 1,,001 randomly selected adults. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Fieldwork by TNS Intersearch of Horsham, PA.

Howard Dean 31%
Joseph Lieberman 9%
Richard Gephardt 9%
John Kerry 8%
Wesley Clark 7%
John Edwards 6%
Al Sharpton 5%
Dennis Kucinich 2%
DK/No/Other/None 24%

Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Dec. 18-19, 2003. N=370 registered Democrats and independents who lean Democratic nationwide. MoE ± 6.

Howard Dean 26%
Wesley Clark 15%
Joe Lieberman 7%
Al Sharpton 7%
John Kerry 6%
Dick Gephardt 5%
John Edwards 5%
Carol Moseley Braun 1%
Dennis Kucinich 1%
Other (vol.) 2%
DK/None 25%

The only real indication is that Dean is at ~30% and everyone else is duking it out to by the other candidate (~10%).

[BootinUp]

15. I am starting to think

that with this many candidates in the race, the number of respondents needs to go way up for real accuracy.

[SahaleArm]

16. Sample size with MOE of 3+ is about 500 out 1000 callers.

http://www.americanresearchgroup.com/moe.html

[BootinUp]

17. From your link

"Enter a population size and a sample size to calculate the theoretical margin of error, plus or minus in percentage points, 95% of the time, on questions where opinion is evenly split.

what do you make of that part in bold?

When you have nine candidates I think the noise is just too much with these 1000 or less polls. In other words, 2nd,3rd,4th there is no clear picture, and yet if the actual population was sampled that obviously wouldn't be the case. Just my opinion based on the lack of much consistency poll to poll. Tom's comments below are interesting, but I don't think that is what I see happening.

[CTLawGuy]

12. that can't be right

Dean can't be doing well!

He's un-elect-umabluble... cause he's not a general :eyes:

[Tom Rinaldo]

14. At the (big) risk of sounding like sour grapes

I do have a problem with a National Poll that breaks one of the 9 Democratic candidates out from the pack and places special emphasis on him that it does not accord any of the other candidates. If you follow the links inside the article you will find question after question that were asked of poll respondents that only probed their feelings about George Bush and Howard Dean. That creates somewhat of a presumptive effect that the race has narrowed to those two men. This is before a single vote has been cast anywhere, while most of the public admits that they know little about Dean, and while two thirds of the Democrats polled are backing other candidates or are undecided. Other than that I am sure it is a fine poll. It certainly has Dean in the drivers seat. But there are other different polls, and most people still aren't paying close attention. I am watching the ever changing shifts in NH myself most closely.

[SahaleArm]

18. Yes five leading questions with a particular candidate name

What effect does this have on the outcome of the last question?

[unfrigginreal]

21. You're making an assumption about the order of the questions

The Democratic candidate horserace question was numbered 998, it could have, and probably was asked before the others. If it wasn't then they aren't very competent pollsters.

[Cheswick2.0]

25. one clear fact and all the rest is speculation

The one fact is that even with 2/3rds of democrats supporting someone else, Dean is consistantly beating all the other candidates.

[Tom Rinaldo]

33. Very True

And very good news for Dean who is the clear favorite. I have no problem saying that. Still Tsongas and Muskie were favored also, and won both Iowa and New Hampshire before losing the nomination.

[TexasPatriot]

34. well...

looking at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/stories/data122203.html

they make it look like the dean question in #4 was asked before 998, and then the detail questions occur after 22.

Whereas I doubt anyone disputes Dean has legitimate frontrunner status at this point, still I would suppose that setting the poll up in such a manner makes these results somewhat less valuable. But we shall see.

[dajabr]

22. If Dean slips in the Polls...

And another takes the lead, I promise not to come here and bitch about the methodology.

Unless it's Lieberman! :-)

Well done, Dean & Dean Voters!

[BootinUp]

26. Not Questioning Deans lead

Just the foggy picture of the rest of the candidates when various polls are compared.

[Raya]

38. Hasn't this poll be shown to be jiggered to boost Dean

I wonder who was behind that?

[BootinUp]

41. Assuming the order of the questions

was asked the way they were numbered, then I think it could have given Dean a boost. But that doesn't mean he in fact doesn't have a significant lead. BTW, I am in no way conceding the race this early. We are not even in the home stretch yet.

[Duder]

35. Looking good...

In nine of the 10 contested nomination fights since 1980, the candidate leading in the last national poll before the Iowa caucuses won his party's nomination. (Gary Hart being the exception)

[shivaji]

36. So Dean leads Clark 4:1, then how come Clark supporters...

outnumber Dean supporters here on DU by a factor of 3 or 4?

Could it be because Dean supporters are out there wearing shoe leather and Clark supporters are a bunch of computer geeks who spend an awful lot of time surfing the net? Is it?

[unfrigginreal]

37. Kick

:kick:

[Northwind]

47. More likely

DU is simply not representative of the population at large, even the Democratic population.

[TLM]

39. Well that explains why the Dean bashers are having such a fit.

Dean 31 (16)
Lieberman 9 (13)
Gephardt 9 (13)
Kerry 8 (8)
Clark 7 (12)


4th and 5th place.... must sting.

[Scott Lee]

44. Wait till Dean's the nom. Then you're going to see a fit, my friend.

It will determine who is truly ABB. All will be revealed.

[jonnyblitz]

48. that WILL be interesting.

this is why I have made peace with any "issues" I may have with the Dean candidacy and am prepared to throw my noisy support behind him. I see lots of smoke and no fire with the Clark campaign despite my intial assumption he would surpass Dean by now.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

45. This part is REALLy depressing. It would have been nice to see if all

the Dems polled this low.

"Asked in the poll whether they trusted the president or Dean more to handle national security and the war on terrorism, 67 percent said Bush and 21 percent Dean. Even on the kind of domestic issues that normally favor Democrats, such as Social Security, health care and education, Bush bests Dean by 50 percent to 39 percent."

[unfrigginreal]

46. kick

:kick:

[DFLforever]

49. Democrats do like a man who takes and keeps a stand.

[JNelson6563]

50. Great news!

Thanks for posting!

Julie

[Scott Lee]

51. kick

[SahaleArm]

52. 40% Other/DK

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04dem.htm

[Scott Lee]

54. kick