Look out frontrunners Bill Richardson is on the rise.
Pollster.com has decided to include Governor Richardson among its top Dems charts. The reason:
Starting today I'm adding Bill Richardson to the Top Democrats charts for both state primaries and the national nomination polling. The graph above shows his substantial movement in Iowa, and New Hampshire looks quite similar. While Richardson is still in fourth place in both states (5th in NH if you include Gore), his is the only trajectory that is clearly moving up.[emphasis mine]
While the others have nowhere to go but down, Bill Richardson is moving on up. John Edwards, in particular, has to be hearing the footsteps. A WHDH-TV/Suffolk University poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters shows Bill Richardson tied with John Edwards at 9%.
Pollster and the WHDH/Suffolk University poll independently confirm what the Richardson campaign internal polling showed.
Our latest survey of 500 likely Iowa caucus goers, conducted from June 18-20,2007, shows that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is moving rapidly into strong contention.
- Richardson has moved to 13% in the trial heat, a 10-point improvement since March-he is the only Democrat to make any significant gains over the past three months. Among the likeliest caucus goers (representing just over 40% of the sample-voters who attended the 2004 caucuses, voted in the 2006 primary and are definite to attend next year's caucus) Richardson has actually overtaken Barack Obama and moved into 3rd place at 18%;
- Bill Richardson has made great strides in his image. His favorable rating has grown by 31 points-more than double-since March-again this improvement is easily the best of all the Democratic candidates. His positive negative ratio (57-9, or approximately 6 to 1) is now higher than both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama;
The more people see Bill Richardson and get to know him, the more they like him. Bill Richardson is a candidate on the rise and the frontrunners are on notice.