Value Judgment: Rubber, meet road

Value Judgment is a daily weblog written by two independent voters on the eastern seaboard of the United States. VJ will focus on the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaigns, including strategy, tactics, and substance. The authors supported Howard Dean in the Democratic primary. Accordingly, his activities will be a prominent topic on this site.

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J at valuejudgment.org

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January 19, 2004

Rubber, meet road

I won't be able to post again until after tonight's caucuses are over, but here's what I'm thinking:

The tightening of the polls has been a bit worrisome. I look forward to the attempts to reconcile whatever the actual results are with all the jockeying of the last week. I think it'll be hard to do unless the winner is Kerry (which I find mighty implausible).

As Dean said in rallies yesterday, this is where we find out if his approach results in actual votes.

I think it will; other campaigns and webloggers brag that it won't. Soon enough we'll have data, not just psychic predictions from both sides, and I look forward to it.

Posted by V at January 19, 2004 08:39 AM

Comments

A fellow by the name of Bogstone left an interesting comment over at my site: He said "Dean's got an ace up his sleeve - first time voters not factored into current polling - rumored to be 65% of his total support which would place him well over 30% on caucus night." I don't know if Zogby doesn't include first-timers or not, but if that is the case, that could mean a boost for Dean and Edwards.

Posted by: Kevin at January 19, 2004 01:01 PM

Yes, there's been some buzz about that. However, it's been a long time since Iowa's had a hotly contested caucus, so I suspect that there are lots of first-time caucusers in general and I'm not sure how Dean's percentage compares.

(Of course, I -hope- that hard numbers and first-timers are Trippi's ace in the hole, but I'm still fidgety.)

Another number I saw was that Dean has 3,000 people on the ground from out-of-state volunteering in addition to 4,000 Iowan volunteers.

Posted by: J at January 19, 2004 01:05 PM

first time voters not factored into current polling

A Ceder Rapids Gazette reporter that was in two caucuses in the North Liberty area (that's north-east Iowa, near Ceder Rapids) was on MSNBC reporting that the Dean organizers in those precincts were not prepared for a large number of first-time, un-registered voters -- that a lot of people basically came out of the woodwork, and the Deanies were caught by surprise by this.

Posted by: genehack at January 19, 2004 10:14 PM

That's so funny!

Posted by: tickling at September 1, 2004 03:45 PM