After months of intensive campaigning, record fundraising and unusually high voter interest, the 2008 presidential campaign has lost its early front-runners on both sides, throwing the races wide open.
Far from clarifying things, last week's tally of first-quarter fundraising totals dispelled the air of inevitability that the putative favorites -- Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- spent years trying to create.
But enough doubts surround each of the other leading candidates to prevent any from breaking loose and emerging as the one to beat. And enough questions remain about the contours of the race -- including which states will vote on which dates and whether anyone else jumps in -- that the only certainty appears to be many more months of grind-it-out campaigning.
"A year ago, there was a clear Clinton scenario, a clear McCain scenario" for winning their respective party nominations, said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of a nonpartisan campaign newsletter in Washington. "The question was whether someone would challenge them. Now it's clear other candidates have caught the public's attention, caught donors' attention. The result is a pair of races that are both very, very competitive."
The 2008 contest always promised to be a fierce one, with no president or vice president running for the first time in decades. More than a dozen candidates are competing, and together they have raised about $130 million in the first three months of the year, a record.
What has surprised longtime political observers is the early engagement of voters.
About half of respondents to a national poll released last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center said they were closely following news of the presidential campaign, compared with 27% at about this point in 2004. Much of the interest comes from Democrats, who were more likely to be following campaign coverage than Republicans, according to the Pew survey.
"There's a lot of anger" among Democrats, and a greater level of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country among voters in general, said Michael Dimock, Pew's associate director. "Thinking about who will replace Bush is a much more intriguing prospect, because there's just so much frustration."
There are other signs that, for now at least, the hunger for change is helping Democrats.
