John Geer on the Web

Why presidential primaries remain fluid and why the polls are often wrong: A central fact of the 2008 nomination process is that many citizens are undecided or have weakly held preferences. This creates instability in voters’ views of the major candidates, says political scientist John Geer. To further complicate matters, it is hard to establish who the “likely voters” are. In contrast to recent nomination battles, there are heated contests for both the Democrats and Republicans, so pollsters face more of a challenge in figuring out in which primary various voters will cast ballots... more