If you don't count Carter in '76 you are a nutball.  :-)

Hotline had projections for all the Democratic presidentials:

Clinton - 35+-5
Obama - 20+-5
Edwards - 15+/-5

I think those are all a little high.  I would say 20, 15, and 10.  That's assuming we're just counting primary fundraising.

(The hotline link is here.)

Your link doesn't work.  This one does for me.  I don't know if gallup does screwy urling.

Yeah I totally, agree, just trying to clarify.  :-)

Yes, Ambinder's post is clearly insane.  People have this tendency to want to read deeper and deeper into every campaigns motives for everything.  We saw a fair amount of that in Iowa, with all sorts of people suggesting that Vilsack had ulterior motives for running and then again that he had other reasons than his stated one (money) for dropping out.  It's ridiculous.

I don't think your polling justifies your point at all.  With Clinton the frontrunner based at least partially on name ID, removing any candidate could/should generally increase her performance.  When Democratic primary voters have had an opportunity to get to know more than one or two candidates, these polls could and probably will shift dramatically.

The Perfect Storm, I think, was more about media than about persuasion.  Having random Iowans show up at your door is not really any more persuasive than random Californians.  I'm sure if Dean hadn't tanked on caucus night the Storm would have been credited as genius organizing.  Really though the flaws in the Iowa operation were a lot deeper than what one weekend of canvassing could fix, and all the field in the world couldn't save Dean from his communication problems.

Yeah, that is a good point. The numbers only make sense for the primary, but the questions they ask don't make it clear at all.

Sorry I posted my response in a new thread right below this.

"Undecided" doesn't mean "supporting everyone equally."  I might be undecided between Richardson and Obama but I can still say that I would never vote for Kucinich.

There isn't a flaw in the poll - it's just that people who are strong supporters of one candidate or another will say they definitely won't vote for anyone else, even if it is someone they haven't heard of.  "Won't vote" and "unfavorable" are not the same thing by a long shot.

I think he means "voters who don't normally hear our message because of their media consumption choices," not "people who have never voted before."

None of these things would satisfy me.  Primary debates are about Democrats picking a side, not showing our candidates to a general election public.  It will get negative, there will be attacks, and it is just going to make us look bad in front of people who will be gleeful about it.

They are so scared of a Vilsack Presidency that they don't even allow you to vote for him.  :-)

I heard a lot of remarks about how the lists we had this year were the best our longtime volunteers had ever had.  The database synced up with the secretary of state's so that we had almost 100% accurate information on who had and who hadn't turned in their absentee ballots.  Beyond that it is more a matter of how effectively volunteers keep track of lists (partially training and partially just diligence) and how well staff coordinate the cleaning of those lists.  I am basically a list nazi, so I think we handled that aspect pretty well in my region.  I'd guess that list quality varied across the state but was generally better than in 2004.