By now, everyone has an opinion on who “won” and “lost” 1) the summer; 2) the last debate and 3) the momentum to win the party nomination. What’s more important is to see how actual voters perceive this race. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll – the gold standard of public opinion polling IMHO – is out with its latest survey which both upends and justifies the current inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom. Forget the horse race, at this stage of the game the most important question is whether a candidate has room to “grow” his/her support. Is he/she seen as a viable and electable candidate by his/her party? The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asks GOP and Democratic primary voters whether they could see themselves supporting a candidate for the nomination of their party or whether they could not support that candidate. The goal for every candidate, of course, is to have more people say they could support you than not. Also, if a majority of your own party says they don’t think they could support you, that’s a sign that your
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