Jay Cost has a smart post on "what makes a frontrunner." Here's the key graf:
Voters right now are paying little attention to the race. Not only that, they do not have very much information about the state of the race. Now, this might sound surprising to you, but the reality is that the ways in which most voters acquire political information are quite different from the ways that you acquire it. Right now, their ways are not offering them a lot of information. And, as a consequence, they are not thinking about or paying much attention to the race.
It's always important to remember that, in the real world, politics doesn't matter much right now. Voters have other concerns. The question is what happens once voters turn their attention to politics--indeed, what happens when politics becomes inescapable, at least for voters in early primary and caucus states. Earlier this year, political consultants Mike Murphy and Mark Mellman made a similar point in the Los Angeles Times:
By creating a potentially illusory sense of momentum or of failure, these pseudo-measures affect the extent of media coverage, fundraising, endorsements and the willingness of volunteers to engage. The result is a cycle. Early national polling is used to declare winners and losers. Those declarations affect the flow of money and coverage, which is then reported as winners and losers, part two, thereby driving the next polls. In 2003, this cycle nearly buried Kerry.
Who will the cycle nearly bury in 2008?