Bottom Of The Barrel

NH Primary Survey

The Boston Globe published poll results yesterday which showed that Clinton and Romney are the leading candidates for their respective parties for the NH Primary, which will occur on February 1st next year.
The Globe, in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, surveyed 400 likely primary voters and found that 35 and 32% respectively support the leading candidates. However does their poll numbers truly reflect their support or do these numbers lie?

When you look at the next question on the poll, if the potential voter has decided on a candidate, you see the following results:

Democrat:

Decided: 24%
Leaning: 28%
Still Deciding: 48%

Republican:

Decided: 16%
Leaning: 24%
Still Deciding: 60%

This looks like that half or more than half of the people asked still have no idea of who they want to vote for and about 75% of all people polled could vote for any candidate. This means, to me at least, that
Obama, Edwards, Giuliani and McCain also all have more than a legitimate shot at winning in New Hampshire next year.

The survey also asked a series of questions on how voters feel about the relative strength of each candidate with the following set of questions:

Which candidate do you think is the strongest leader?
Which candidate do you think is the most trustworthy?
Which candidate do you think has the most experience?
Which candidate is best able to deal with terrorism?

For Democrats, Clinton was tops in each question except trustworthiness, which went to Obama while on thee Republican side, Romney is trustworthy and has experience but Giuliani is a better leader and McCain is your terror fighter.

What does it all mean? Well for Democrats is seems like if they forget that they don't trust Clinton, she should win while the Republicans still need to sort out who their best man is. Let the races begin...

posted by TheWino @ 9:30 AM