Oh, how the polls can change

At this point in the presidential race, national polls are to be ignored, as I've mentioned before. There are some national poll results out today, so make sure to ignore them. (They show Giuliani continuing his long slow decline, and McCain making his inevitable comeback--there's no place to go but up from where he was in early August.)

At the Gallup blog at USA Today there are some interesting historical comparisons:

In late August, early September 1987, Michael Dukakis was already at 13% of the Democratic vote, in second place only to Jesse Jackson, who had 19%.

A Sept 13-15 1991 Gallup poll showed the following standings for the Democratic candidates:

Mario Cuomo 31%
Jesse Jackson 14%
Jerry Brown 11%
Tom Harkin 5%
Douglas Wilder 4%
Bob Kerrey 4%
Bill Clinton 3%

Well, what happened? The biggest change was the December 1991 decision by New York Governor Mario Cuomo not to run for his party’s nomination. That opened everything up. Bill Clinton went from 6% in a late October, early November Gallup poll (with Cuomo included) to 17% (just behind Jerry Brown) in a Jan 3-9 Gallup poll (with Cuomo not included).

In 2003, while John Kerry was not technically the front runner in September, he was close. A Sept. 8-10 Gallup poll showed this:

Dick Gephardt 15%
Howard Dean 13%
Joe Lieberman 12%
John Kerry 11%

The trajectory of the 2004 Democratic race showed Wesley Clark charging a little in late September, then a major Dean surge late in the year, then the famous Dean implosion, and then Kerry running away with the nomination by late January.

The polls tell us the current state of things. But events always intervene. Gallup tries to play it off as if only one candidate exiting a race will shake it up, but there can also be candidate blunders, bad campaigning, or just a lack of likeability. Hillary is riding high in the polls now, but upon closer inspection voters might decide she's really not the one to carry the party mantle to victory. This could happen--voters don't make up their minds until the last minute. They can say they like this candidate one day, then another one the next, but they don't really pay attention until the end. That's why polls, especially national polls, at this point are next to worthless and predict absolutely nothing.