… There are a lot of ways to frame an early look at a presidential nomination contest. One comparison is the NCAA basketball tournament: The objective is to make it into the Final Four next March and then hope for the best. At this point, we are roughly at the Sweet 16 level. When you hear people say that the early polls simply reflect name recognition and should be ignored, that’s half right. Current national and early-state polls are in fact an indicator of name recognition and at this point, the ones who are best-known are Biden, Sanders, and Warren. But at this point in 1975, few people outside of Georgia had ever heard of Jimmy Carter, and in 1991 not many voters outside of Arkansas had ever heard of Bill Clinton.
Yet ignoring these early polls also has its shortcomings. People don’t give money to someone they’ve never heard of, and few people go to rallies or meet-and-greets for candidates whose name they don’t even recognize. CONT.
Charlie Cook