The Libertarian Republic reported Saturday that Johnson is not trending in the right direction in polls – at least not enough to reach the debates. While one certainly can’t refute that the polling over the course of the last few months is not an strong upward trend, that fails to consider a very important point: Johnson has only just begun to actively campaign August 5th.
Johnson polling at 8% right now reflects just traditional libertarians and disaffected mainstream voters who lean libertarian. It does not reflect an honest attempt at gathering votes from the general population yet.
Johnson kicked off his ground campaign with a stop in Reno on Friday August 5. Yep, you read that right: he’s just now started the traditional bus-tour-style city-to-city that you envision when you think about a presidential campaign.
Prior to this week’s $65,000 ad-buy in Maine, Johnson and Johnson PACs had spent a total of $15,000 in advertising during the entire cycle. Polling data, which was indeed flatlined during August and July, reflects zero ad-spend. It reflects zero campaign stops. With a purported fantastic fundraising month (we’ll see August 20 when numbers are released) expect a lot more ads in a lot more places.
Johnson-Weld was doing little to proactively garner votes; a little social media to an already-convinced following and a few TV appearances. A pair of town halls and some television appearances on Colbert, Samantha Bee, et al. hardly constitute an active campaign. Yet, as Chandrasekhar mentions – there’s a perceivable bump from the second town hall.That says to me that, when tested during prime time TV, the world responds well. They’re about to actually start doing that regularly.
As we reported earlier this week, Johnson still has a problem with name recognition from people interested in voting 3rd party. Voters want to vote 3rd party but haven’t bothered to look up who that is. This is, ironically, a fantastic problem to have. These voters are an easy resource to tap – Johnson just has to introduce himself and not screw it up. Perhaps with an ad with a very gentle introductory message like this week’s ad buy in Maine. Or this other one that could air tomorrow on Fox, presumably to an NFL audience.
One should look at the campaign as a new beast starting August 5th. January 6 – August 4 was laying the ground work for the actual campaign, which as just begun. Let’s see how Johnson-Weld is polling once the pavement has been beat and some money spent. Johnson has soaked up the Libertarian base and the easy GOP/Dem defectors. Let’s see how he does when Walmart moms, rural Maine, and Sunday Night Football have a formal introduction to Johnson-Weld.
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