His presidential campaign is just a fortnight old, and already Rick Perry is soaring in
the polls. The three major national surveys conducted since his announcement all give Perry
double-digit leads over previous frontrunner Mitt Romney. He has also, importantly, taken the lead in Iowa and is now
odds on to win both there and in South
Carolina come February.
This is certainly an encouraging position for a new candidate, but history suggests that Perry supporters should temper their optimism with a heavy dose of caution. Until the autumn of 2007, Rudy Giuliani led the Republican field by a similar margin to the one Perry has now. And Hillary Clinton’s lead over Obama was even more commanding. Neither went on to win their party’s nomination. But a race with a more striking resemblance to the one going on now is that for the 2004 Democratic nomination.
In the summer of 2003, the primaries looked like a close four-way fight between former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, Congressman Dick Gephardt and Senators Joe Lieberman and John Kerry. Lieberman topped the polls in the first half of 2003, but Dean proved a better fundraiser and established himself as the frontrunner by the end of the summer. Then, on 17 September, retired General Wesley Clark declared his candidacy, and immediately leapt to the top of the polls – in very much the same way as Rick Perry has in the last two weeks. Here is how the polls for the 2012 Republican contest looks now:
And here, for comparison, is Gallup’s poll of the 2004 Democratic primary in the days following Clark’s announcement:
And the result in 2004? Clark won just a single primary – Oklahoma’s – and dropped out of the race before Super Tuesday. Dean, Lieberman and Gephardt all fell away and Kerry clinched the nomination well ahead of John Edwards.
None of this is to say that the same fate awaits Rick Perry. After all, there are many important differences between his campaign and Clark’s. Whereas Clark suffered from never having run for anything before (and struggled with the media as a result), Perry is an experienced campaigner, having thrice been elected to the Texas statehouse, twice as Agriculture Commissioner, once as Lt Governor and thrice as Governor. Just last year, he easily withstood a strong primary challenge from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson. In addition, Clark chose to skip the Iowa caucuses, which proved to be a major error (Clark himself said that “everything would have been different” if he had competed there). Rick Perry will not make that mistake.
But it is possible that Perry’s surge will fizzle out, as Clark’s did in 2003 and Michele Bachmann’s has in recent weeks. So if Perry proves to be this year’s Clark, and Romney’s a Dean or Lieberman or Clinton or Giuliani, one question arises: who will be the Kerry, the Obama or the McCain?
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