McClatchy-Marist national poll: Clinton leads Bush, Christie, & Paul by 9-11pts.

[Skill and Chance]

It seems that she's come back down from the stratosphere to roughly Obama 2008 levels this year, but the good news for her is she appears to be holding steady there.  I think she would have the most trouble against a dark horse who could either neutralize the first woman president factor or claim credible outsider status.

[Skill and Chance]

I think most polls put Christie's name recognition in the 70s.  Rubio's is a bit lower.  Walker's is pretty low.  So there are plenty of potential GOP nominees with lower name recognition than Clinton has (she's well over 90%).

It's a lot more meaningful when you're testing two people with high name recognition (ex: Clinton vs. Romney) as opposed to say, a McCain vs. Obama poll in 2006.

Mondale was well known as the former vice president, but he started out at the beginning of 1984 roughly tied with Reagan.  Reagan won by 18 points:



And Dole was well known in 1995 (being Senate Majority Leader, former presidential candidate, and former VP candidate).  He actually led Bill Clinton in the polls in early 1995, despite eventually losing by ~8 points:

http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu/msg04399.html

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What is your evidence for this?  I don't see how this hypothesis even makes sense.  You could say that polarization will prevent a blowout from occurring, but why would it mean that the candidate who's leading polls right now would be more likely to win?  And even if you can spin a scenario as to why, what is the evidence that this supposed phenomenon is real?

You need a baseline of presidential elections in which the early polls were predictive of the final result in order to prove such an assertion, but if you're saying that this only applies to very recent presidential elections in which both candidates were well known two years beforehand, then you have too few elections to work with in order for things to be statistically meaningful.

I don't see why it doesn't make sense. With increased polarization, there are fewer people who are open to changing their minds, and those who have already made their choice are more likely to stick with it. Granted, there's no way to prove this, it's just a theory. But I doubt we'll be seeing any "Dukakis leads by double digits 3 months before the election, Bush wins easily in November" type elections in the modern era. Romney vs. Obama, for instance, was pretty static. Obama only opened up big leads as Romney was hammered during the GOP primary, and Romney only led immediately after the first debate. The equilibrium during almost the entire race was a modest (2-5 point) Obama lead, and that's how it ended as well.

And 2008 behaved similarly until the financial crisis: consistent small Obama lead with a statistical tie in the wake of the R convention.  I do think a Bush/Dukakis situation could happen again but it would now require a stock market crash or huge foreign policy victory to generate that swing.