Ron Paul, The Invisible Candidate, Scores Big In Another Iowa Poll
For the second time in the same week, an independent poll shows Ron Paul in a statistical tie with Herman Cain for the lead heading into the Iowa Caucuses. by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Friday, November 18, 2011
Lightning has struck twice in one week. First, it was a Bloomberg News Poll that showed Paul in a statistical dead heat with Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. Today, another poll published by Iowa State University and The Gazette of Eastern Iowa shows Cain and Paul within the margin of error from each other with Romney running third. The polling surprises have led Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza to write, "Paul is an emerging Iowa force in a race that remains as wide open as at any time in recent memory. That means that Paul’s rivals ignore him at their own peril."
Cain leads with 24.5%. Paul is second at 20.4%, which puts him within the poll's five point margin of error compared to Cain. Romney is third at 16.3%, and all of the other candidates are all in single digits less than 8%.
With Cain's candidacy faltering due to allegations of sexual harrassment that refuse to go away, the road for a shocking Paul victory in Iowa is now open as a reasonable possibility. Paul's driving success continues to come from the fact that his campaign is the most active campaign in Iowa and that his message is striking a positive chord with the voters.
With a race that is now just six weeks from the caucuses, this poll is yet another major, positive result for the Paul campaign. The caucuses are usually dominated by the campaigns that do the best job of getting out the vote, and political observer and Iowa Politics Insider Jason Noble, of the Des Moines Register, states that the Paul, Romney, and Santorum campaigns have the necessary level of organization in Iowa so far. Caucuses Insider Jennifer Jacobs, who also write for the Des Moines Register, shows in her recent column that the other campaigns are beefing up their campaign staffs and that Rick Perry has the largest spendable war chest by far (although Romney's cash on hand is not identified in her article).
However, in terms of volunteers on the ground, the Paul campaign is the clear leader. The Bloomberg poll reported that two-thirds of respondents had heard directly from the Paul campaign, leading all other candidates. Also, Paul leads in TV advertising, having had the airwaves mostly to himself for the past month or so. Rick Perry has started running his own ads, so that situation is changing, but the Paul advantage in this regard up until this point may prove to be too much for the other candidates to overcome. Bachmann was second in voter contacts at 61%, but her exposure did not translate to support nearly as well as Paul's exposure has done.
I see this series of events as being evidence that Paul's message that the Fed needs to be held accountable for its actions, that the monetary system needs overhaul, and that the budget needs to be balanced within his first year as President is a message that is playing well with Iowa voters, despite the fact that Paul continues to be treated by the major media as the invisible candidate, or as comedian Jon Stewart described him this past summer, "the 13th floor in a hotel".
Also, I was particularly struck by the following paragraph from the ISU report on their polling results:
"Cain has strong support across all income levels. He does particularly well among the wealthiest likely caucus goers -- getting more than 38 percent of the support from those who make more than $100,000 a year. Among the least well off, Paul leads at around 41 percent. Cain and Romney fare worse than average among that group. The wealthiest voters do the have the highest level of undecideds."
In other words, the people who have been most adversely affected by the banking crisis, the bailouts, and the aftermath support Ron Paul by a large amount. That fact will likely prove very significant come January. Meanwhile, Cain and Romney will feel more and more pressure to explain why it is that they are the favorite candidates of the rich and well-off in a time when there is such anger about the expanding gap between rich and poor.
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