Study The Past So I Don’t Have to Repeat It
I have heard Democrats and Republicans referring to the 2007 Mayoral race in Indianapolis as a reason not to trust polls because of Greg Ballard’s come from behind victory over Bart Peterson.
Might I suggest looking at the actual results.
In the May 2007 primary, there were 17,150 Republican votes for Mayor cast and 21,435 on the Democratic side. That means 38,535 voters cast a vote for Mayor. Since everyone knew who Peterson was and only a handful of people knew who Ballard was, we need to focus only on the Peterson votes.
Peterson received 18,794 votes, or 46% of the total votes for Mayor. So in a primary, a two-term incumbent Mayor got less than 50% of the vote. In the general election, Peterson only got 47% of the total votes. 52.7% of the voters chose Ballard or Fred Peterson. Like I said, anyone who paid attention at the time saw this coming. Now a lot of other things fell into place (the tax increase, Council antics, etc.) but the primary was the first real indicator that Peterson was in trouble and the GOP had a shot at winning.
So if you’re running behind and want to draw a Ballard-Peterson analogy, feel free but you might be looking at the wrong candidate.
