Nate Silver appraises the early handicapping line on the GOP's 2012 field and takes issue with the insider infatuation with John Thune and Tim Pawlenty, pointing out that each of the other four top-tier candidates -- Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee -- have far better polling numbers than the lesser-known hopefuls.
What is odd then is that candidates like Tim Pawlenty, the outgoing Minnesota governor, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota are being discussed so much among insiders. Hotline ranks them as the 2nd and 3rd most likely Republican nominees, respectively, but those are the candidates whom I’d bet against at the odds that Intrade is offering.
The theory seems to be that all of the front-runners are flawed in some way, which is undoubtedly true. But if one of the front-runners flops in some way once the campaign actually begins, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be one of the other front-runners who would pick up their slack: if Sarah Palin’s campaign gets off to a poor start, for instance, it is probably Mr. Gingrich — not Mr. Pawlenty or Mr. Thune — who would get first dibs on her votes.
The analogy is to a baseball team that is 7 games out of first place at the All-Star break: how likely is this team to come back and win its division?
Nate also makes another excellent point: the notion that the "blandness" of Pawlenty and Thune would be an advantage in the primary is absurd. Primary voters, particularly in the GOP as we saw in 2010, aren't interested in bland candidates. Maybe that plays in the general, but for the primary, GOP primary voters would rather get fired up by Sarah Palin than bored to death by John Thune.