My friends who support Ron Paul are very excited by a new poll that shows him leading in Iowa. For them, it’s the first sign of the breakthrough they’ve been expecting to reveal that more people are “seeing the light.” I’m on record as saying that Paul can’t win the presidency — even though it would make me happy — so Paul’s supporters won’t believe my analysis. But let me explain why this poll doesn’t mean much.
First, let’s take the poll results at face value and assume they’re correct. Paul has been pounding Gingrich hard with effective advertising lately that exposes Gingrich as the phony he is. (Unfortunately, the ad plays a bit fast and loose with some key facts, but let’s ignore that since it doesn’t affect the horse race, which is what I’m talking about today.) It’s natural that Gingrich might have fallen some in the face of the attacks and some of that support could have gone to Paul.
But there’s a key piece of information that some of Paul’s supporters haven’t noticed. The people who support Paul support him and nobody else. The rest of the people pretty much support anybody other than Ron Paul. I say this because Paul is second choice for only 9 percent of the voters who don’t support him. So as other candidates drop out, their supporters are far less likely to jump on the Paul bandwagon. They’ll be joining other candidates instead.
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