Glad to see the fringe majority split about evenly for Edwards and Obama.  Great news for Hillary.

I agree with you.  MSM pays attention to the dirt (Mort on Beltway Boys considers the netroots the "dirty pool players") but not polls or positive messages.

Online, I don't think it matters if the vote is split or not - clearly, Clinton has no traction within the netroots.

Similarly, if one combines the Edwards/Obama supporters offline, they do sum up to be double-digits ahead of Clinton alone. There may be an offline effect in the grassroots. I'm more interested to know just who Clinton's grassroots supporters are, though. For example, I'm hearing an awful lot about the individual meetups that are being organized via Obama's website and elsewhere. Clinton has an organizational tool as well, but it pales in comparison. I typed in my home zip code in Westchester County, NY for a 50-mile radius (covering essentially the entire tri-state area, plus some), and there are only 3 meetings - none of which seem really serious when it comes to the kind of organization-building that Obama's meetups (and probably Edwards' meetups) are about. That's why I'm befuddled by Clinton's lead right now...to me, I think her support is very soft.

i'm not beating you up here, but why can't the polls be fixed so we can vote only once? sometimes i get about 2 or 3 million emails a day asking me to sign stuff. they will not let me sign more than once, i know i try. hell i would sign up everyone in the phone book if i could stop the war in iraq. i don't stuff the ballot box here, but i did when i was i college. we actually out did ourselves we put in to many ballots. there was over 100% participation. so i can understand why it's being done. why can't it be stopped?

Online I think the "anti-Hillary" vote is being split.  I have no real evidence for this, but my sense is that in the party as a whole, a lot of Obama's support might otherwise go to Hillary were he to drop out.  I don't think that is true of Edwards's support, though.  Maybe I'm just way off base here, but if we took preference rankings for "typical" supporters of the top 3, my guess is they'd come out looking like:

Clinton: 1) Clinton 2) Obama 3) Edwards

Obama: 1) Obama 2) Clinton 3) Edwards

Edwards: 1) Edwards 2) Obama 3) Clinton

Were you to throw Richardson into the mix, he might even into third place for all three if he becomes better known.

Assuming that the population here represents high-information voters it is gratifying to note that Hillary's support is so low.  As for the split of the 'anti-Hillary' vote I doubt she would get many of the Obama supporters based on the 2nd choice figures.

It seems the only viable candidates in this population are Edwards and Obama.

Go on.  Email it.

I'm not so sure about the "anti-Hillary" idea. Hillary just doesn't make an impact online in any positive sense. I don't get the feeling that the Edwards folks have a "my guy is better than Hillary" attitude, nor the Obama folks. If anything, there seems to be developing a Clark-Dean sort of battle between those two camps. And I'm not in either camp this time! Yay! Much more fun this way.

How that plays out in the offline world I think is tough to tell. But I do think that too many people are getting too firm an idea of how the dynamic will play out. As a Richardson guy, I think Richardson is being vastly misunderestimated, but that's just me.

But no matter what, there's a lot of time to go and a lot of events to play out. For example, if the Senate keeps dithering over Iraq, any Senator is going to have a drag on their efforts, a little taint to their name. And the candidate forums (all 276 of them) will have an effect as well, including things like Obama skipping this first one having an impact.

I have a question about Richardson.  If Hillary is the scourge of the net roots for the war and her DLC leanings, why does Richardson play so well here.  He came to be under the Clinton Administration.  Doesn't it follow that Bill Clinton had those who were of the third way mold in his administration?  Is it the war that gives him a pass?  I am truly curious, no snark or innuendo should be assumed beyond what's presented in the question.

Isn't this the poll where Kucinich (and Clark?) was (were) removed from the choices midway through the poll? (under the allegation of stuffing). If so, why include Kucinich in the results? I didn't vote in this straw poll since by the time I saw the poll the only candidate worth voting for (Kucinich) was not present in the list.

Of course when I say "worth voting for" I am just using my personal, subjective criteria of honesty, logical positions, lack of BS, support for liberal/progressive/left issues, etc. I realise that other criteria are available, such as slavish centrism, "electability", vapid populist rhetoric, the ability to forego a necktie, and so on. So please don't read me the wrong way ;-).

Based on nothing but my gut I'm detecting a shift away from Clark, who is not a candidate and not not a candidate (not a typo), sort of in the Twilight Zone somewhere, toward Obama.  It's still pretty early.  We are two full baseball seasons away from having a new decider.

yeah, i think that Edwards and Obama do draw from the same base of support, but it would be foolish for either of them to attack one another. Both should focus on Clinton, bringing her down from two different attackers and growing the base of anti-Hillary votes. Once Obama's and Edwards' support combined is significantly larger than Clinton's, then they should go after one another to become the winner.

With apologies to Chris, I had to chose as one of my favorites the "JPS" option.

Anyway I find it interesting that "Other" is still beating every candidate but Edwards and Obama. I only voted once...but I did pick "Other" first for one reason. Edwards and Obama want to run to the left of Hillary in the primaries. That's not particularly hard to do but Edwards and Obama are actually bad salesmen for the non Blue Dog Democrats/DLC types.

Yeah Obama is anti-war and half-black but this is only because he can still be ADM's coporate stooge doing so. Only in Illinois.

Edwards is a trial-laywer, pretty, and full of syrupy words. But he tried running to the right of Kerry and Dean in 2004 so the Swiftboaties had all the material they need to sink him ... already.

Meanwhile, Obama-Edwards-Clinton triumvirate all point to the same resume: Less than two terms experience in the US Senate, most of which was in the minority party. Hey now policy-niks don't get too excited.

More ominously though, the Democratic gubernatorial alumni who are declared are getting laughed out of the CNN studio too. And that's not good because you want a mix of voices and perspectives in the primary to keep the public intrigued and invested. At least the GOP field looks just as doomed.
 

I don't understand how the poll works.  I put Clark in first place, but when I pressed vote, it said that my vote counted for my second choice, Obama.  Why is this?

With about 15 to 17 voters (sorry, I've complained to "Soapy" that we need the voter total as well as the votes total) here are our results. I'm continually amazed at the quality of information we get with approval (multi-vote or checkbox voting). Being Illinois we may lean a bit stronger to Obama. Since we are using approval voting I was able to throw in the kitchen sink without hurting the results.

Vote for as many as you want.

• Obama - 14 votes (20.9%)
  
• Gore - 12 votes (17.91%)
  
• Edwards - 11 votes (16.42%)
  
• Kucinich - 6 votes (8.96%)
  
• Richardson - 6 votes (8.96%)
  
• Dean - 5 votes (7.46%)
  
• Clark - 4 votes (5.97%)
  
• Nader - 4 votes (5.97%)
  
• Gravel - 3 votes (4.48%)
  
• Clinton - 2 votes (2.99%)
  
• Dodd - 0 votes (0%)
  
• Giuliani - 0 votes (0%)
  
• McCain - 0 votes (0%)
  
• Vilsack - 0 votes (0%)
  
• Biden - 0 votes (0%)
  
• None - 0 votes (0%)

Total votes: 67

I've been urging Chris to run one of these here sometime and he gave my comment a 3 rating, so lets cross our fingers.

Still it's interesting to see Richardson slowly pull away from the second tier.  He has more than enough time to catch the back of the lead pack.

This is a little off topic and maybe seems a little ridiculous, but -- I still don't understand why the netroots can't field it's own presidential candidate, as a third party.

As a very fun research project I'm still trying to work out more of the actual pragmatic barriers to this, but the very first step, just getting on the ballot in all 50 states, seems completely doable; raise the application fees and get the signatures in each state, etc...  

I participated in your poll near the tail end of it I believe (maybe I was 700th out of 811) and tried to post a link to it for others to join in, but then you posted something to the effect of the whole thing being bogus and you were calling it off due to "stuffing" --- now you are parading the poll as if the results are legit and you make no mention of your poll-in-progress comments in which you pooh poohed the poll and diminished its "findings" other than to imply you "saved it" and brought it back from the dead.  What gives?  Please clarify.  My suggestion for you next time you conduct a poll is: #1 - - promote it ahead of time with a clear start and end point; #2 - - only declared candidates (no Gore, Clark or Sharpton or other non-declareds included); #3 - - - enable people to enter "UNDECIDED" as an option;  Finally, here is a novel idea - - - why not have an against the grain "DEFECTORS" poll and measure each of these candidates on their "DRAG" potential - - - I'll let you phrase the question, but it could be something to the effect of, "If this candidate were the nominee of the Democratic Party, how likely would you be to crossover and vote for a Republican candidate or vote for a third-party candidate such as Ralph Nader or someone else?"