It’s one of the most reliable truisms of politics: you can’t put too much stock in polls until the race in question really begins in earnest. Just ask President Giuliani. But it’s always something when you actually see it happening. A new poll just came out this morning showing Steve Poizner in a dead heat with Meg Whitman (Whitman 39%, Poizner 37%), even though Whitman has been miles out ahead of Poizner for months. She even seemed so strong that Tom Campbell basically bagged out of the governor’s race and switched to the Senate primary where he’s probably going to beat Carly Fiorina — the other GOP-anointed candidate. (There had been a couple recent polls showing Whitman’s lead shrinking fast — but the two main ones were partisan polls.)
But it’s not just Whitman. Nor is it just establishment Republicans getting zapped or singed by Tea Partyers or upstart conservatives (see the fight Bill McCollum suddenly has on his hands in Florida.) We see it with Joe Sestak’s out of the blue jump into the lead in Pennsylvania.
I usually think of it as the tritest political observation around that establishment candidates across the board are under siege. But for once it genuinely seems so.
