Google News Poll for 8/22/2003

		This Week (8/22)			Last Week (8/15)
1	Howard Dean	3830	18.3%	-0.1	1	4550	18.4%
2	John Kerry	3500	16.7%	+0.0	2	4120	16.7%
3	Bob Graham	2930	14.0%	-1.2	3	3740	15.2%
4	John Edwards	2530	12.1%	+1.1	6	2700	10.9%
5	Joe Lieberman	2360	11.3%	-0.3	5	2850	11.5%
6	Dick Gephardt	2270	10.8%	-1.4	4	3020	12.2%
7	Dennis Kucinich	1460	7.0%	+0.4	7	1610	6.5%
8	Al Sharpton	1140	5.4%	+0.1	8	1310	5.3%
9	Carol Moseley Braun	695	3.3%	+0.2	9	776	3.1%
10	Wesley Clark	233	1.1%

Since it appears increasingly likely that Gen. Wesley Clark will enter the race I decided to add him to the poll just so we can judge how his entry will, if it happens, effect his media share. As such, the inclusion of his numbers naturally drops everyone else's media share numbers. Surprisingly, considering how much chatter there is on the political blogs about his potential candidacy, his media coverage is virtually non-existent, so the impact of adding him at this point is negligible. He doesn't even pass Braun whose candidacy has been virtually non-existent for weeks now.

I expect this will change dramatically if he does enter the race, but talk about starting in a hole!

Howard Dean continues to hold the number one spot pretty firmly this week. Kerry isn't even threatening to overtake him again. I think Dean's "quoteworthy" status is cementing. I expect his numbers next week to go up even more after the Sleepless Summer Tour.

Graham and Gephardt are the two losers this week. I've suspected for some time that Graham's numbers have been artificially high (due to his position as ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee) and I think he might finally be settling back into a position that has more bearing on his true standing in the race. Gephardt's drop is interesting because the chatter I've picked up in recent days is that he may be the only one remaining, of the declared candidates, who can stop Dean. Though I think people might be premature in writing off Kerry this soon, but his decision to announce his candidacy in South Carolina instead of Iowa, New Hampshire or Massachusetts has the air of desperation to it.

Edwards got a bit of a boost this week. Possibly because of he has finally started his "run commercials late in the process and come from behind" strategy. We'll see if it pans out.

Lieberman held steady as did Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun. Of course, for the latter three that is bad news while for Lieberman is just par for the course.

(Methodology: All numbers are taken from the hit counts when searching on the Google News Service for news stories containing each candidate's name. Click on each name to rerun the search. You will get different results as the numbers are constantly changing. I make absolutely no claim that these numbers have any real meaning.)