Clinton’s Lead in Iowa Grows but Does it Really Matter?
The Des Moines Register published a poll on Sunday that showed Senator Hillary Clinton gaining a lead on previous Iowa favorite John Edwards and the “it? candidate, Senator Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign and the mainstream media have pushed this recent success by Clinton as a sign that she is emerging as the most viable candidate for the Democrats. My question about this poll and other polls is whether they are a product or a generator of media hype. In other words, does the Des Moines Register poll result from Clinton’s hype in the national press or will the poll generate greater press for Clinton and feed conspiracy theories among independents?
I look back to the Iowa Republican Party’s straw poll as an example of how starved for news the mainstream media is these days. The poll was bought by Mitt Romney and not attended by Giuliani, McCain and Fred Thompson. The hype around Romney’s success and the dark horse success of Governor Mike Huckabee were grasped onto by major newspapers and TV networks after months of exhausting rhetoric. The answer to my original question based on the Iowa straw poll and subsequent straw polls in other states is that the poll is reflective of media attention rather than grassroots support.
Clinton and Romney share a similar problem in a general election. Both candidates would try to point out flip-flopping and political opportunism while failing to address their own flip-flopping and opportunism in the past. The Iowa caucuses are still three months away and there are too many independents in states like Iowa and New Hampshire to claim that Senator Clinton has struck a blow against her opponents. I implore the national press and the voters of early primary states to consider their choices carefully and avoid these polls like the plague.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:43 am
[...] title is fairly melodramatic but after writing my entry yesterday on Senator Hillary Clinton gaining the lead in the Des Moines Register poll Sunday, I noticed an article discussing Mitt [...]
October 28th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
[...] is that Edwards is an underdog with a detailed populist program facing the two-headed monster of Hillary and Barack. John Edwards has been releasing specific policies since the beginning of his campaign [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
[...] seems to be victimizing itself at every turn by adhering to the ridiculous legal mandates within Iowa and New Hampshire state law dictating their place in the primary process. DNC Chairman Howard Dean [...]