Huffington Magazine Issue 91 | Page 11

ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES Enter of HuffPost Pollster’s own Mark Blumenthal, who wants this term to be used more realistically, so we stop hurting this poor word “frontrunner” so much! Here are some rules, from Mark Blumenthal: 1. “First, to be a frontrunner you need to at least have a real lead, which means statistical significance in some form. But again that’s the easy part.” 2. “Second, we really need a different term to distinguish the true, dominant, likely-to-win frontrunner from a candidate that enjoys an early lead that’s LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST HUFFINGTON 03.09.14 We really need a different term to distinguish the true, dominant, likely-to-win frontrunner from a candidate that enjoys an early lead that’s quite possibly temporary.” quite possibly temporary.” My advice is to consider using terms like “ahead of the pack” or “so hot right now” or “I get sprung when I think of [NAME OF CANDIDATE],” and let the truly dominant candidates take “frontrunner.” Because, honey, you do not want to have headlines like, “Newt Gingrich, frontrunner” on your record. Oof. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), another 2016 “frontrunner.”