Hear about the ABC/WaPo poll that has Romney out in front with registered voters (but well within the 3.5 margin of error) by 3? Sure you have. The media has been beating it to death for 24 hours now.
But have you seen this from Quinnipiac (registered voters, MoE 2.2)?
In trial heats against President Obama, Romney trails 47 - 41 percent, while Huntsman, Pawlenty and Palin trail by 48 - 34 percent, 48 - 36 percent and 53 - 36 percent respectively.
No? He leads with indies 45-38.
Okay, then, how about this one from Reuters/Ipsos (adults and registered voters, MoE 3)?
Obama leads all potential Republican challengers by double-digit margins, the poll showed. He is ahead of his closest Republican rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, by 13 percentage points -- 51 percent to 38 percent...
In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, the other Republican contenders fared even worse than Romney's 13-point gap in a match-up with Obama. Palin trailed Obama by 23 points and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was behind by 19 points.
Do any of these polls prove anything? Sure, but not who is going to win; it's way too early (like, a year early) for that. It does help cement, however, that Romney should be considered the front-runner.
We know that media focuses in on these outlier polls more than the "same old narrative" polls, but we also know it's the outlier poll that's most likely to be wrong. And we know that ABC and the WaPo (like most media) will act like there's no other poll in existence but theirs.
Obama is not trailing Romney, in fact he has a decent lead in most polls. But Romney is competitive, and at this stage leads his actual rivals even as the polls force him to share the stage with someone who isn't running (Sarah Palin, whom Reuters/Ipsos had up over Romney 22 to 20, and whom sucked all the oxygen out of Romney's "I'm running" announcement.) Pawlenty remains an also ran and you need a microscope to find Huntsman's numbers:
In the Quinnipiac poll, Herman Cain, a businessman, continues to draw attention in third place with 9%, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, are tied at 8%. Rep Michele Bachmann gets 6% and former Minn. Gov. Tim Pawlenty is at 5%.
As
Nate Silver more delicately puts it:
Polls suggest, however, that Mr. Huntsman is likely to be an unacceptable choice for many Republican voters.
Hey, Huntsman is a Very Serious candidate! Still, before he or Romney gets to November 2012, they'll have to deal with
this:
The fact that less than half of voters have a favorable view of the [Morman] religion is likely to be a political issue that Gov. Mitt Romney, and should his campaign catch on, Gov. Jon Huntsman, will have to deal with as they pursue the White House,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
So what does this prove? Only this: no matter how often we see the media barking up the wrong polling tree, expect them to do it again.