Why did John Edwards lose so much support in NV?

Polls had him doing ok for a while, then awful. was it yucca at the debate? was it the media attention on the bickering duo? what happened? i was really suprised at the results today because i stopped following polls and tv in the last couple of days, i had to take a second off of politics.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/nevada-primary.html

there's nothing to indicate Edwards isn't a viable candidate. As much as other candidate's supporters would like to make it so, Edwards is still very much in the game.

Edwards is going to hit hard spending limits that Obama and Hillary will not. Bill Clinton didn't have that disadvantage in 1992.

Honest question. I've never heard that phrase before.

I think a lot of it was the threshold. He missed 15% in many places, and lost those accumulations. I also heard someone mention that Edwards supporters were being turned away. Something is strange, though, going from 27% to 5% in a couple of days, without a scandal or gaffe.

Obama or Clinton... so they went for their #2

If the threshold in their caucus is 15%, like it usually is, all of those place where Edwards rec'd 1-14% had to then walk away from Edwards and choose either Clinton or Obama.

My hunch is that if this were a primary, Edwards would have got 12-15%, With Hillary winning high 40s, Obama low 40s.

just a hunch FWIW

shows the major weakness of the caucus system.

Bottom line though is that Nevada is just not an Edwards kinda state.

It was the caucus system in Iowa that drove Biden, Dodd, and Richardson off the campaign trail.

I have some minor issues with a caucus, but it is cheaper and easier to do than a primary. It also allows for underfunded campaigns to compete door to door. That said, I still lean toward primaries, but have no real "moral" issue with caucuses except for one: the 15% threshold rules.

These 15% rules serve to winnow out minority voices within the party.
Why not just let the folks caucus? If 10% of the folks in your neighborhood like Kuchinich, and 9% like Dodd, Well, God Bless 'Em.
It isn't that hard to report the percentages and award the state delegates accordingly.
All the 15% rule does is move the race down to the 2-3 "big" candidacies.

Some will argue that without these rules we would never get a clear winner, every race would be muddled and only decided at the convention. I don't know. But I just have a problem telling folks they don;t count because they are a minority.

thankfully. Its an antiquated system that favors party insiders.

Its not exactly your average state. It was Harry Reid vs. Obama's union effort. Everything else got lost in the shuffle as the news media focused on that battle.

I have seen the same with Clark in 2004 - once Kerry got both Iowa and NH, all the state leads we had, evaporated overnight. It's why I said - thought it after NH, but said it only after Kerry's endorsement - that it's a two people race. People here were offended, but as I said, it was my experience. Early primaries do count - last win perception changes polls very fast. believe it or not, things from now on are no longer quite as open for Obama as they were before today.