Confirmation For The Hillary Surge
I joined D’08 reader Patrick in skepticism over the Newsweek poll that showed Hillary over both McCain and Rudy and trouncing Romney – but the result has been confirmed by a second poll by CNN:
47 percent of the 1,019 people surveyed said they would vote for Clinton, D-New York, — and also for McCain, R-Arizona. Forty-eight percent said they would choose Clinton over Giuliani’s 46 percent. But matched up against Romney, 57 percent of survey respondents said they would choose Clinton, compared to 34 percent for Romney.
The telephone poll was conducted Dec. 15-17. The sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.
Forty-seven percent of poll respondents said they would choose McCain over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama — compared to 43 percent for Obama — and 49 percent said they would choose Giuliani over Obama’s 42 percent. But 51 percent said they would vote for Obama over Romney, who had 35 percent.
This is remarkably similar to the Newsweek results, so I think it’s safe to say it’s a decent snapshot of where the electorate is today, for what that’s worth. But the poll hides yet another shocker:
Former presidential candidate Al Gore was locked in a virtual tie with McCain, 47 percent to 46 percent. Gore and Giuliani, meanwhile, each received 46 percent. But 53 percent said they would choose Gore over Romney, with Romney receiving support of 37 percent of poll respondents.
Al Freakin’ Gore? Okay, okay…what can we learn from this?
Simply put: the Democrats are still riding the 2006 wave. Though I don’t doubt the poll results, I very much doubt that the Democrats will continue to hold such a simple party affiliation advantage after a few months in control of Congress…
It could also be that people realize Gore was right all along and would thus vote for him rather than McCain who wants more troops in Iraq (which 11% support?) even though he was wrong about actually going there in the first place…”wrong”, of course, being a subjective term here of course, in “the people”‘s eyes, myself included.
I think it’s useful to remember that Republicans were walking around triumphantly just two years ago, and the nuttier ones were talking about the end of the Democratic Party. Now I’m seeing the same thing the other way around. In both cases, the triumphalist winners are ignoring the fact that both election wins were solid, but narrow. It doesn’t take much to turn things around either way.
Mark:
Here is an interesting link on several Presidential preference polls taken about 20 months before the general election (going back to 1959):
http://people-press.org/reports/print.php3?ReportID=65
In each case, the poll was between the anticipated frontrunner of each party as determined at the time of the polling, so in some cases they include candidates who didn’t go the distance. In almost every case, though, the results of the poll bear a closer correllation to the results of the previous midterm elections than the result of the subsequent Presidential election.
For instance, in March 1995 Dole led Clinton 51-45 after the Republican 1994 route; Clinton actually won by 9 1/2 points. In April 1987 (after the Dems took over the Senate) presumed Dem nominee Gary Hart led Bush I 50-42%, the actual Dem nominee lost to Bush by 7 1/2 points. In Feb 1983 (after the Dems picked up 26 house seats in the midterms) Mondale led Reagan 47-41%, he lost in a historic landslide. In early 1963, Kennedy led presumed nominee Nelson Rockefeller 63-32% after the Dems had an unusually strong midterm performance for the party in power, the final result was a landslide, but by a smaller margin and despite the fact the Republicans passed over Rockefeller for a less electable candidate (at the time). And in early 1959 (after the Republicans were decimiated in the ’58 midterms), polls had Adalai Stevenson trouncing Richard Nixon in a landslide; the final result was actually extremely close.
The only exceptions to this rule were the early 91 polls, where Bush I was buyed not by the midterm results, but the war in Iraq, which had just concluded; and 1979, which had Carter up on Reagan, although the midterm results in that election were a bit inconclusive (Reps picked up seats, but less than expected).
Sorry for the long post, but it does seem that the Dem bounce will be with us for many more months, but will dissipate long before it really matters.