Jeb Bush dropped out of the Republican race on Saturday, the final chapter in a campaign that began with him as a front-runner and ended with him looking rather pitiful.
A year ago, GOP primary polls showed Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee winning. Now they’re out.
And Bush isn’t the only candidate whose star has fallen over the last year. Indeed, if you look back at polls from early in the race (courtesy of RealClearPolitics), they’re unrecognizable:
Five of the top six candidates from February 2015 have now dropped out of the race. The sixth — Ben Carson — finished dead last in South Carolina and probably should have dropped out by now. Donald Trump didn’t start showing up in polls until June. His first few weeks as a candidate, he polled around 4 percent, giving no hint that he would emerge as the frontrunner later in the year.
This is something political junkies ought to remember — but probably won’t — when primary season gets under way in 2019: early polls are totally meaningless.
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