Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire Like Richardson's "Job Interview"

Bill Richardson has officially joined the Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards in the double digit territory.

Recent polls in both New Hampshire and Iowa show Richardson making a jump in the polls. He's now at 10% in both states.

This comes right after an ad buy in both states, showing Richardson's "Job Interview" ads. Whether you like them or not, they seem to have done their work in New Hampshire and Iowa beautifully for the Richardson campaign. Watch the ads:



The ads have also been viewed 148,000 times on YouTube. He should seriously think about airing them in Nevada as well.

Considering the positive poll news, the timing seems perfect to make his presidential run official. Yeah, he's still been exploring. Richardson will make his announcement tomorrow morning in Los Angeles. Then, Hillary will be the only candidate still in exploratory mode.

Another Worthless Poll

So, the Las Vegas Review Journal decided to waste some money on another presidential poll. Alas, it is worthless. Why? They asked 300 registered Democrats. 300 is not a decent sample for a poll which is evident by the given margin of error, which is ridiculously high at +/- 6%. The poll also includes Al Gore, who's not even running. Therefore, the numbers mean nothing and I won't even bother to post them here.

Wait a second, I just looked at their method page and things don't quite add up. While they claim to have asked 300 registered Dems, the method page states that only 259 Democrats were interviewed, a similar number of Reps for the Republican poll and more than 100 Independents. This poll is absurd. Worthless, worthless, worthless.

Clinton Leads in New Zogby Nevada Poll

Zogby released a poll today of 500 likely Nevada Democratic caucus-goers conducted April 11-12 with a margin of error of +/- 4.5%.

Hillary Clinton leads the crowd with 35%, followed by Obama (21%) and Edwards (19%). Richardson has 5% and Biden 2%. Dodd, Gravel, and Kucinich register below 1%. Zogby himself states the obvious:

Their leads track what is happening nationally in polling, perhaps a reflection of name identification, as candidates just begin their efforts to build campaigns in Nevada, which has moved near the front of the line in the state–by–state presidential sweepstakes and represents uncharted waters for the 2008 election process.

So, it's basically up to the candidates. If they wanna catch up to Clinton, they need to come to Nevada and meet the voters. Dodd's working on that tonight and tomorrow. This becomes rather obvious when you look at the Zogby numbers for New Hampshire and Iowa. Obama and Edwards are just 6 points behind Clinton in New Hamphire and Edwards leads Clinton and Obama in Iowa.

One thing to keep in mind: no one really knows who will go to the caucus. No one. Caucus polling is difficult enough in Iowa where Dean and Gephardt led the polls in December 2003 only to lose heavily to Kerry and Edwards one month later.

I'll continue posting all the poll results. At the same time, I'm sticking with what I've said before: they're mostly worthless.

March Straw Poll at MyDD

Right now, you can vote in a straw poll over at MyDD by ranking candidates. When I voted Barack Obama was ahead of John Edwards in the final round by two votes.

New Nevada Poll Worthless

Seems like I was right in wondering how soft the numbers of the new Nevada poll published yesterday were. As it turns out the sample was 600 regular voters with 240 Democrats. So, Hillary's lead in the poll is among 240 regular Democratic voters who weren't asked if they have attended a caucus before, if they will attend this caucus, or if they even know what a caucus is.
It's pretty incredible that a poll with 600 respondents should have a margin of error of 4 percent as they claim. That should be at least five in my opinion. Then take the 240 sample and you have a huge margin of error which makes the poll absolutely worthless.

This poll was commissioned by KRNV and the Reno Gazette-Journal. It's sad to see that they were not able to commission a poll worth talking about, one with a decent sample and without Gore and Clark who are clearly not running at this point (or ever).

For this reason Chris Bowers over at MyDD is actually considering fielding their own polls at four seperate times before the Nevada Caucus in January:

I am led to wonder if MyDD itself would be able to make up some of the gap. For a little under $10K (Update [2007-3-10 20:54:27 by Jonathan Singer]: The cost would be in the range of $9,500 TOTAL for the four polls), MyDD could commission Survey USA to conduct four polls in Nevada: one in March, one in June, one in September, and one in December. Compared to other polls that will come out on Nevada, we could make sure that only announced candidates were in the questioning, that undecideds were not pushed too hard, that second choices were given, that there was a decently sized sample, that there were lots of good demographic crosstabs, and still probably have a better likely voter screen than anyone else around. With four polls like this, we could build trend lines, and basically be the organization for Nevada polling during the 2007-8 nomination process.

So, much question to you is this: would you be interested in contributing money for a project such as this? We would not have to collect it all right away, and could instead hold fundraisers when it is time for the next poll. MyDD has also been saving some of our ad money for special projects like these, so we could cover some of the costs ourselves. My question to you is: would you contribute money in order for this project to get off the ground?

Fielding a decent poll costs money of course, money which the KRNV and RGJ apparently don't have. So, if you think this is a worthy endeavour, go over to MyDD let them know what you think and help them out.

Hillary Leads in Nevada Poll

A Research 2000 poll shows Hillary with a lead in Nevada. From the Political Wire:

In Nevada, a new Research 2000 poll released today finds that Sen. Hillary Clinton leads among likely Democratic caucus voters with 32% support, followed by Sen. Barack Obama at 20%. John Edwards and Al Gore were tied for third place at 11%.

On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani leads with 38% support, followed by Sen. John McCain at 18% and Newt Gingrich at 11%.

Some observations:

• I don't know who commissioned the poll and no more details are currently available.
• There must be somewhere between 10 to 20% undecideds as the combined tally for the top four is 74%.
• Gore is in the poll even though he's not running (yet? ever?).
• No mention of Richardson.
• It's still very early
  
• And finally: this is a caucus! Not a primary. So, I wonder how soft these numbers are. Only people who are really interested in a candidate will go to the caucus. Organization on the ground is everything.
• As for the Republicans: McCain's numbers suck. He's below 20% and Arizona borders on Nevada. Ouch.