Jon Stewart has some advice for anybody alarmed by Donald Trump's apparently relentless rise in the polls: Relax. Polls this early don't mean squat. The Daily Show host, in a segment on "Premature Ecalculation," looked at some other front-runners from the spring before elections of yesteryear, including Joe Lieberman, who in April 2003 was way ahead of other Democrats aiming to beat George W. Bush.
In the spring of 2007, Stewart noted, Rudy Giuliani was the Republican front-runner by a wide margin, with 50% to John McCain's 21%, according to one poll. The trend is by no means new, either. In May of 1991, the leading Democrats vying for the 1992 nomination were Mario Cuomo and Jesse Jackson, both polling in the low- to mid-teens amid a wide field. At the bottom of that field, struggling to reach 1%, was Bill Clinton. (More Jon Stewart stories.)