IT’S KERRY, KERRY, KERRY….This is just stunning. 
John Kerry now leads in the 2-day Rasmussen national tracking poll and Dean has dropped to third. On the day of the Iowa caucuses Kerry was polling only 11%.
It’s pretty obvious that there’s an awful lot of shallow support out there. Even Dean’s loyal supporters are apparently more interested in beating Bush than in electing Howard Dean, and when he stopped looking invincible they dropped like flies.
And in the same way that currency traders all stock up on nice safe dollars when world events get hairy, apparently Kerry is the nice safe haven for Democratic voters who think election events have suddenly gotten hairy. I guess that makes sense ? long-time politician, solid Democrat, looks presidential ? but it surprises me that there’s apparently such a large wellspring of desire for someone like that.
I’m not sure how the campaign polling operations work, but results like this make me wonder why tracking polls don’t try to measure depth of support a little better. If Rasmussen had asked voters early this week how strong their support of Dean/Kerry/etc. was (say, on a scale of 1-10), I wonder if we wouldn’t have been a little more prepared for this?
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the ARG New Hampshire 1-day tracking poll has Kerry at 29%, Clark at 21%, and Dean in third at 17%. Ouch.
