So, I just read the Q1 campaign fundraising report over at MyDD:
http://www.mydd.com/...
...and interestingly, the numbers seem to correspond almost precisely with the overall conventional wisdom around here about where things stand at the moment in overall polling percentages: Clinton with $26 million, Obama with $22 million, Edwards with $14 million, Richardson with $6 million and so on.
Considering that I'm currently torn between "#4" Richardson and "#2" Obama, I thought I'd see where things stood, nationally, at this point in the campaign 4 years ago:
Naturally, there were many different polls around, but this one seems about as good a source as any; it was released on March 6, 2003:
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/...
They ran it two ways--the first assumed that Hillary was going to run in '04; the second assumed that she wouldn't. Since she didn't, I'll present the second round of numbers, which, at that particular moment, read as follows:
Joe Lieberman: 21%
Dick Gephardt: 17%
John Kerry: 12%
John Edwards: 8%
Carol Moseley-Braun: 7%
Bob Graham: 6%
Al Sharpton: 5%
Howard Dean: 4%
Dennis Kucinich: 2%
The MOE was a mere 2.8%, with over 1,200 voters polled.
Check those numbers out again. Joe Lieberman in the lead. Howard Dean a virtual unknown, being beaten by Al Sharpton, fer heaven's sake.
The obvious point is that you cannot overstress the importance of name recognition this early in the game. My mom, an enthusiastic Richardson supporter (who hasn't been particularly politically active before now), keeps asking me "when Richardson is gonna get his campaign into gear". I keep having to explain to her that a) it's up to HER to get it into gear if she's really that supportive, and b) the official numbers are effectively meaningless at the moment, at least in terms of the final outcome; they only have meaning in terms of showing momentum and helping with the "bandwagon" effect.
Anyway, I just thought other supporters of the 2nd & 3rd tier candidates might need a bit of a morale booster :)