Critics of Ron Paul will tell you that he has no chance of winning the Republican nomination for President. In fact they seem to be overly eager to convince you that there is no need to look any closer. Just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz you are told "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" as if there is nothing important to see there.

So you need to look at the evidence and decide. What does it tell you about Ron Paul’s chances in this primary?

First of all, it tells you that that Ron Paul has not fared very well in the national polls of Republican voters.

What else did the evidence tell you? The evidence presented here does show that Ron Paul dominates in the Straw Polls, Debate Polls, Fund Raising, Web Traffic and Grass Roots Networking.

So what could be the reason for the drastically different stories that the numbers tell?

Let’s examine the anomaly of the national polls. The only area that Ron Paul scores low in are the national polls. This begs the question, how are these polls being conducted?

Telephone calls are placed to Republican voters, at home, on landlines. The voters being called are previous Republican voters from the last election cycle. These calls do not engage the voters who have registered as Republican in 2007 because of Ron Paul. These calls are to traditional Republican voters, which are only one part of the party that will be voting in the primaries.

 

Let's look closer at the group of traditional Republican voters that receive polling calls. Only those that are home regularly and answer such calls will be able to give their opinions. The views of regular Republican voters who are active outside the home, whether at work, at volunteer activities or children’s events when called by pollsters, will not be included. The poll will also not include disaffected registered republicans who have not voted in recent elections.

Ron Paul has been creating many new Republican voters that were previously Independents, Libertarians and Democrats. These new Republicans are an undefined factor as of yet, but there are many indications that they are in fact quite a large group. Many of these undefined voters are also young and do not have home landlines.

The bottom line is that the national polls are very limited in the sample of opinion that they gather. They simply are not a valid indication of the wide variety of voters that will be making their voices heard loud and clear at the Republican Presidential primaries.

There can be no doubt that Ron Paul has a large base of supporters. November 5th, 2007 proved that this large base of supporters is a force to be reckoned with, when over 36,000 of them donated a record $4.3 million dollars in 24 hours. There can be no doubt that Ron Paul supporters are more active and have more passion than any of the other so-called "top tier" Republican candidate supporters.

Ron Paul can no longer be labeled a "long shot" candidate as he absolutely dominates in the Straw Polls, Debate Polls, Fund Raising, Web Traffic and Grass Roots Networking and is clearly a "top tier" candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination.