Poll Position

For a long time now, Howard Dean nay-sayers have been pointing to national polls--where, admittedly, Dean's not polling higher than fourth--to say that he will not be a real contender.

The best rejoinder, in my opinion, is to point out that the national frontrunner--Joe Lieberman--is in the low single digits in the places it counts most, Iowa and New Hampshire.

But CBS is out with a new name-recognition poll that shows Dean tied with Kerry for first.

Now, name recognition is not everything. But the telling thing is comparing Dean's position in the poll to CBS's poll in May:

CAN YOU NAME ANY DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES?
(sorry about all the space below--Blogger isn't letting me get rid of it somehow; just scroll down. It's like dead air . . .)

All Americans	May 2003	July 2003
No, cannot recall any	66%	66%
John Kerry	7%	7%
Howard Dean	1%	7%
Joe Lieberman	9%	6%
Richard Gephardt	6%	3%
Bob Graham	3%	1%
John Edwards	2%	1%
Dennis Kucinich	N/A	1%
Al Sharpton	2%	2%
Others	4%	6%
Among Democrats	May 2003	July 2003
No, cannot recall any	64%	66%
John Kerry	5%	7%
Howard Dean	2%	7%
Joe Lieberman	10%	6%
Richard Gephardt	5%	3%
Bob Graham	2%	1%
John Edwards	4%	1%
Dennis Kucinich	N/A	1%
Al Sharpton	4%	2%
Others	5%	6%

You read that right: In a mere two months--just two months!--Dean gained 5% and 6% in name recognition, while the other candidates were down or unchanged in at least one of those sets of data. (I'm not counting DK, who was not included in the May numbers.)

And of all the candidates' ups and downs since May, Howard Dean's is the only one that exceeds the poll's 4% margin of error. In other words, no one can explain away Dean's rise to a tie for first with statistics or any other excuse. He just simply has performed well.

The CBS polling period covered July 8-9, so it, unlike the last Gallup poll placing Dean fourth, came after the media blitz Dean's Q2 fundraising numbers created. I firmly believe this is a harbinger of what the next set of national polling data will tell us. Dean will move into the top two or three, and at the very least will get out of single digits (Gallup had him at 7%--I'm too pressed for time to dig up the link now). I also believe the next polls out of Iowa and New Hampshire will show Dean more than statistically tied for first, especially the Iowa poll.

I am on record elsewhere as saying that polls, especially this early, are not the end-all and be-all of this race. But the CBS data really is significant.

It's gonna happen!