2008 State Polls

Bill Richardson is Legitimate - Our Pick for the Underdog Democratic Candidate Most Likely to Win; Statistical Analysis

Published May 13, 2007

Competitive at Home. One criteria we expect of these rogue unknown candidates is that they win or at least be very competitive in their home states. Nobody knows you better than those in your home state and if you cannot win that; then why run for president and compete in and expect to win in 49 other states?

Winning New Mexico. Richardson passes this requirement in that he is winning his home state with 28% over Hillary Clinton with 22%. Coincidentally, Edwards and Obama are each only winning their home states by 6% over Hillary Clinton.

Other Second Tier Candidates Can't Win at Home. Biden is not winning in Delaware. Kucinich has not even polled better than 3% in Ohio. Dodd is losing Connecticut by 16%. Tom Vilsack was polling fourth in Iowa when he dropped out of the race. So Richardson should not be bundled in the same sentence with those candidates because he is winning his home state just like Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.

Richardson Doing Well in Neighbouring States. Another criteria we expect from candidates is that they do well in the states that are surrounding them. This eliminates those that are winning their home states by sheer name recognition. Richardson is getting twice the support from Western states than in non-Western states. So this shows that Richardson is likeable and that his favorability and support extends beyond his states' borders.

Richardson's Self Proclamation. He even proclaims in campaign speeches that he can win the West so let's look at how he does in the western states. We have averaged his poll results in each of these states in all of 2007.

Excluding New Mexico From Analysis. In non-western states, he polls below the margin of error at 2.1. A statistical blurb in the crowded field of Democrats. This is okay because he is still a relatively unknown candidate. In the western states, Richardson polls almost 3 times better but a lot of that is distorted by how well he has done in his home state of New Mexico; 28%. Even if we exclude New Mexico, he still does about two times better than in non-western states.

Legitimizes Bill Richardson. Now you may think that there is nothing significant about getting 4% versus 2%, which would be true if we were very late in the primary season but the season just started and this legitimizes Bill Richardson's run for the presidency and is why he should be considered in the same boat as the other top tier candidates.

The third and most important criteria is that they do well in the early states. In 2008, the first three states are Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

As you can clearly see, there is a trend upwards for Richardson since January in these early states. Richardson has passed all of the three criteria we ask of candidates to prove that they deserve top tier candidates.

So we will be so bold as to make the prediction that Richardson is the underdog democratic candidate most likely to win the Democratic nomination.

Good luck Bill.

Contributions to this article have been made by Proloy Bhattacharyya (M.S. in Electrical Engineering) and David Terr (PhD in Mathematics).

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