As I looked at the new national Harris poll, something didn't seem right. Dean's lead was certainly impressive, but the dramatic rise in "Not Sure" (from 26% to 34%) made me think that ganging up on Dean and further claims "unelectability" have begun to stick.
Let me explain. While from October's poll to the most recent poll, Lieberman, Clark, Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards and Kucinich lost a total 18 percentage points. Sharpton and CMB picked up one point each and Dean picked up a whopping 10 percentage points. At the same time, "Not Sure" picked up 8 percentage points. The question is, why did "Not Sure" increase so much?
My guess is that a significant number of the new "Not Sures" are people who had been a supporter of Lieberman, Clark, Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt or Kucinich that have waivered, but cannot fall into ranks behind Dean as they are buying the "unelectibility" meme. Given that, as those candidates begin to drop out, I believe their supporters will begin to support whoever at that time is the Dean-killer of the moment. The question that then raises for me is whether Dean can survive such transfer of support for another candidate (and I'm not talking about convention support, I'm talking middle-to-late primary support).
I think a lot of this transfer will be mitigated by two events: (i) major blowouts in the early primaries and the resulting knee-jerk coronation by the media and (ii) significant endorsements from high-profile state-wide politicians. But even in the face of that, I cannot forsee many Kerry, Gephardt or Lieberman supporters shifting their support to Dean until after the convention.
Therefore, let's assume the above is true and the numbers stay about the same as in the Harris poll. Lieberman, Gephardt and Kerry voters (21 percentage points) represent an anti-Dean bloc.
This leaves us with two viable scenarios (i) that support is pooled for Gephardt or Lieberman or (ii) that support is handed to Clark. If (i) holds true, then we have a three-way race going into the late primaries. If (ii) holds true we have a Dean-Clark race which would be very tight. That Clark lead would be significantly wider if the new "Not Sures" are truly suspect of Dean's electibility and are added to the Clark total (it would also make Dean's hold more tenuous in scenario (i) if those "Not Sures" or split between Clark and Lieberman/Gephardt).
In either case, we would definitely see a lot of stories attempting to shine a spotlight on the waning of the Dean campaign (and the rise of Gephardt/Lieberman and/or Clark), which would cause no little amount of damage to the Dean campaign.
I guess this leaves me with the following conclusion: the Dean campaign needs to immediately begin to heal the rift between themselves and the Gephardt/Lieberman/Kerry support. If Dean can secure a portion of those votes in middle-to-late primaries then he has secured victory. Without such a move, momentum will be handed to a late-surging "Dean Killer".
I realize this is all highly speculative, but if true, then the Dean candidacy will be decided between now and whenever Kerry and Gephardt or Kerry and Lieberman bow out.
