DEAN vs. CLARK….Mark Kleiman has the latest polling data on Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. Nationally, Dean has 24% and Clark has 20%, with everyone else way behind. And there’s a big gender split, with Dean doing well with women and Clark doing poorly. Don’t know why, though: Marian likes Clark just fine. Maybe he needs to get Gert out on the campaign trail more. And that grandkid.
In New Hampshire, Dean retains a huge lead with 36% of the votes, but Clark has finally moved ahead of Kerry for second place, 16% to 13%.
Obviously Dean is still the guy to beat, but this is good news for Clark. Regardless of what the other candidates want to believe, it really does seem to be quickly turning into a two-man race in both votes and money, and I have a feeling that as voters desert the other guys more of the them will switch to Clark than to Dean. This is based on nothing more than my gut, which obviously likes Clark, but I have a feeling that Dean will have a hard time ever getting support from more than 40-50% of the voters. In a two-man race, I like Clark’s chances.
In other Clark news, he’ll be having an online chat with several bloggers today at 2 pm Pacific time. You can monitor the action here.
