Can we start referring to Attorney General Terry Goddard as the early front runner in next year’s governor’s race? A national political poll released today, the second in less than a week, shows Arizona voters favor Goddard over Republican incumbent Jan Brewer and at least one other prominent GOP name. As with the previous survey, the new poll from Rasmussen Reports leaves out a number of potential Republican contenders, so these results are in no way predictive of what will happen next year. Still Democrats are happy to tout Goddard’s standing in these polls as a real trend.
Interestingly, Rasmussen is often cited by Republicans as more reliable than other national polling firms. (Sssh! Don’t tell the GOP that poll founder Scott Rasmussen is a former member of the mainstream media.) So these results should provide more emphasis for Republican insiders to “encourage” Brewer to step aside and let other contenders vie for the 2010 party nomination.
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Of course you are right that results of a poll taken in Sep. 2009 are not predictive of what will happen in Nov. 2010 but given the ever-increasing length of campaign seasons in modern American politics, combined with the very short time between the primariy and general elections in Arizona, these polls provide a good guage of who is a viable person to get behind now. Not saying I’m happy about that, much as I genuinely like Terry Goddard and think he’d be a great candidate for Governor. As I pointed out in the blog post you linked, I like primaries in theory and I think intra-party competition is healthy. Heck, I was an Obama supporter back in Feb. 2007 when he was polling 30 points behind Clinton. But Presidential preference primaries are a totally different animal than what we have in the state. Maybe we could try out early caucuses in a handful of Lege districts and see how that changes things. Might be interesting.