Why You Should Never Believe Polls in June

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

While the rest of the country has only their municipal elections to worry about this year, Virginia and New Jersey. The New Jersey contest will be something of a walk, though Jon Corzine seems to be doing his best to make things interesting. It's Virginia that has the real action this cycle.

Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine (D) Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (R) are locked in a dead-heat in the race for governor. The funny thing is, it hasn't always been this way. If you look at polls taken over the last six months, you'll see Kaine steadily gaining on Kilgore. And if you had looked at the polls in April, you might have given up on Kaine alltogether.

This is all a way of saying that it's far, far too early to get excited about Bobby Casey's big lead over Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, fret about Sheldon Whitehouse not getting enough traction against Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, or wonder why Jon Tester hasn't taken Montana by storm. Most of the country has much better things to do in their lives than pay fastidious attention to many different levels of politics. Early polls represent a combination of name recognition, party identification, and a general sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the way things are going in the country and the state. Only in extreme cases -- Santorum, perhaps, and superstars like John McCain and Russ Feingold -- can a candidates issue profile sway voters one way or another this early in the election cycle.