Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The 2008 Presidential election may not go the way most pundits think it will:

A leaked Democratic poll has suggested that Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner in the race for the party's presidential nomination, could lose the 2008 election because of her "very polarised image".

The survey by the Democratic pollsters Lake Research indicated that both Mrs Clinton and Barack Obama, second in the Democratic race, trailed Rudy Giuliani, the Republican front runner, in 31 swing congressional districts.

The private memo, leaked to The Washington Post, painted what researchers described as a "sobering picture" for Democrats who believe that President George W Bush's disastrous favourability numbers almost guarantee they will capture the White House next year.

All party preference polls show that Democrats are much more popular than Republicans. But when the names of individual candidates are used, the gap narrows considerably.

"The images of the two early [Democratic] favourites are part of the problem," the memo said.

The leaked poll found that Mr Giuliani, a centrist Republican with liberal stances on issues such as abortion and gay rights, leads Mrs Clinton by 49 per cent to 39 per cent in the swing districts.

Very few things--and that is being generous--can be taken for granted in politics. Except this: Voting always matters. Activism always matters. And when people confidently tell you that they know who will be the next President of the United States a year from now and after an extremely fluid election in which there is neither a Presidential incumbent running for re-election nor a Vice Presidential incumbent seeking the top job, chances are those people do not know what they are talking about.