Of Political Polls And The Gop Presidential Primary

Items from my political notebook as the heat of summer continues to pound us into submission:

It seems in the battle for the Democratic Party presidential nominee in 2020 there is a new leader, at least in the first contest.

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has soared into first place in Iowa and now holds a nine-point lead against former vice-president Joe Biden.

In the poll released last week Biden is now tied for second with Bernie Sanders with 17 percent. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., is also climbing fast and is at 13 percent.

Kamala Harris (eight percent), Cory Booker (three percent), Beto O’Rourke (three percent), Tulsi Gabbard (two percent), Amy Klobuchar (two percent), Tom Steyer (two percent) and Steve Bullock (two percent) round out the field. Other candidates were at one percent or less.

This move is really stunning as Biden has been the leader in virtually every poll, both national and by individual state when it comes to the Democratic race.

It’s still early of course and one should remember that the winner of Iowa doesn’t always go on to the nomination. New Hampshire is also a key early state holding the first primary after the Iowa caucus.

For what it’s worth, one Atlanta-based talk show host predicted on Friday that Warren would be the eventual Democratic Party nominee.

It’s common for new frontrunners to emerge during the course of a presidential primary. That’s typically because the candidate in the lead receives much more media scrutiny.

No competition: The chief campaign spokesperson for President Donald Trump said recently “there is no primary” for the president, ignoring the fact that former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld is taking on Trump in the race for the GOP nomination.

Weld is a former two-term Republican governor of Massachusetts and has been highly critical of President Trump and has officially declared he is running for president.

Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for the Trump re-election campaign, told New Hampshire station WMUR’s that Weld will “fail miserably.”

“It’s a free country. People can run for president if they want to. They have that right,” Murtaugh said. “They also have the right to fail miserably, which is what anyone who opposes Donald Trump will do. The president has an approval rating within the Republican Party of over 90 percent, which is higher than any other president inside his own party or of either party in history, with one exception —that being George W. Bush immediately following Sept. 11.”

It gets better.

“So, the president has the absolute, nearly unanimous support of Republicans,” the spokesman said. “He will be the Republican nominee. We’re focused on November of 2020. There is no primary for President Trump.”

Clearly any incumbent president is the favorite to win his party’s nomination. However, it is not unheard of for a sitting president to receive a primary challenge.

Pat Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush in 1992 and actually fared quite well in Iowa and New Hampshire. Those who have been around longer also remember that Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic Primary in 1980.

Former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is reportedly pondering a run for the Republican nomination in 2020 as well.

Narrowing the field: Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper ended his president campaign in recent days. There are still more than 20 candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination, however.

Hickenlooper never really caught fire nationally and reports are he is going to run for U.S. Senate.

One of the more interesting campaigns for president also ended in recent days as former Alaska senator Mike Gravel ended halted his unusual bid.

Gravel was not in the race to become president (by his own words) rather he wanted to get on the debate stage and help shape the issues the eventual nominee needs to be focus on.

The campaign for the 89-year-old was operated by two teenage college students. Known on Twitter as the “Gravel Teens” the duo handled all campaign tweets and responses. Gravel, of course, had veto power on any statements tweeted out but rarely used it, he said.

Gravel actually met the donor requirement to be in the earlier debates (raising funds from at least 64,000 people) but national Democratic Party officials, who certainly did not want him on the stage, said he didn’t poll high enough.

Of course that was a two-edged sword because almost no polls included Gravel which of course made it impossible to register any polling numbers.

Monticello native Chris Brides is a long-time newspaper columnist. He has earned awards for his columns from the National Newspaper Association, the Georgia Press Association and the Georgia Sports Writers Association. He welcomes feedback from readers about this column at pchrisbridges@gmail.com.