We are in the midst of the NCAA basketball Final Four, which seems like a good time to talk about polls. All year news organizations put out polls ranking the top college basketball teams in the country. But during the Final Four we are reminded that not a single regional top seed is still alive. And one Final Four team, George Mason, was not even ranked in the top 25 during the regular season. The point is this — polls are snapshots of people’s perception of a moment in time. But you won’t know who the winners and losers are until you play the games.
The same principles apply to political polls. We are entering the season when political polls will be taken regularly. In the Governor’s race, they will show our current Governor — who after three-plus years in office has almost universal name ID in our state — well in front of me. The first such poll was taken this week by Zogby, and shows me trailing the Governor by a 49-33 margin.
Our campaign has barely begun. We have not done any radio or TV ads, and very few people are paying attention. Yet the Governor’s numbers are below 50 percent already.
This race is very winnable. Republicans now have about a 150,000 voter registration advantage, and tend to vote in higher percentages than Democrats and Independents.
Don’t get caught up in polls taken between today and late October. They will all show me behind, probably by more than this Zogby poll. And none of that will matter because when people begin to focus on the election, probably in October, they will see the difference between my core values and the values of the incumbent. And we will prevail.
