Ron Paul Already Polling Better Than Last Time

It’s election season again, and you know what that means… Ron Paul is running for President and the media is completely ignoring him. Even Jon Stewart is noticing this time, and he’s put together a brilliant snapshot of the most recent ignorance:

This stuff leads to conspiracy theories by Paul fans about how the media wants to bring him down – why else would they talk more about Santorum and Huntsman? Or maybe they just simply don’t think he’s a serious candidate. But what’s fascinating to me in all of this is that Ron Paul arguably actually deserves some attention this time around.

At this time four years ago, he wasn’t even on the polling radar, and Paulbots were still complaining about his lack of coverage, or that the polls didn’t reflect his true popularity. Today Paul’s average is sitting at 8.8%, and his average only even peaked at 7.4% last time around. From the RealClearPolitics 2012 GOP poll collection, we learn that in the last two weeks Paul has even twice polled ahead of Michele Bachmann (you know, the candidate important enough for a Newsweek cover piece) for third place. He’s solidly ahead of Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, and Santorum (that’s gotta be depressing for those guys).

Additionally, Paul’s current average is brought down by some low values of three and six percent that could be overridden by some new polls. Paul only reached double digits once in the entire election cycle last time, and he’s already done it with two different polls now – suggesting that it’s not an aberration this time. Now that Perry’s in the race I don’t expect Palin to run, and Paul’s average should creep into a solid fourth place in the coming days.

Ron Paul got an ignorable fifth place at the Ames Iowa straw poll four years ago. This time he got second, only a few hundred votes behind Michele Bachmann. But you wouldn’t know it from the coverage. I think it’s going to be simply fantastic watching what happens with Paul and the media this time.

I’ve written before about how I’m not a super Ron Paul fan anymore these days, even though I still like the guy a lot. It’s apparent now that he doesn’t have to “win” the Republican party games to influence the overall debate, and I believe he is continuing to increase in influence. But I also think coverage of the man will be better this time around – even if we can’t expect much from the cable news channels. Someone from The Atlantic has a great piece from yesterday that basically says, sure, he has some strange, kooky views, but are they really any stranger than the unwinnable War on Drugs or kookier than farm subsidies for sugar, corn, and tobacco?

A media just a bit more focused on policy, and a bit less obsessed with the horse race, might lead to a national conversation about foreign policy among Republican hopefuls, rather than permitting the whole field to ignore Paul except when directly confronted by him in debates, despite the fact that on many issues, the policies he favors are more popular even among Republicans than the positions they favor.

Alternatively, broadcasters could obsess about Palin, who isn’t even in the race, like the anchor in the clip above, and utterly ignore Congressman Paul.

To be continued…