With Bill Richardson bowing out, Dennis Kucinich is the only second-tier Democratic candidate still alive (unless you count crazy-ass Mike Gravel, which I don’t).
Richardson polled in double digits for a little while back in Iowa, but that didn’t last too long. We already know how wrong polling can be, but did polling poorly help kill off Bill Richardson’s candidacy*?
Daniel Engber at Slate proposes a thought experiment: what if election polls were banned?
Without polling numbers to drive their narrative, political journalists would turn to other, less direct measures of candidate strength. At the outset of campaign season, the front-runners would be designated according to the size of their war chests, and the number of endorsements each had racked up. Focus groups, man-on-the-street interviews, and even voter brain scans would get more media play. Political futures markets might become a central element of mainstream campaign coverage, rather than the fringe oddity they are today…
More @ Slate.
*I mean, you know. He wasn’t hurtin’ nothin’ no way. But I’m saying.
