Hillary Clinton remains the frontrunner in primary and general election polling for president in 2016.
Depending on your stance on the presumptive Democratic frontrunner, many casual political observers are either confident or resigned when faced with the prospect of Hillary Clinton avenging the narrow defeat of her 2008 campaign for president and sweeping her way both to the Democratic nomination and into the White House.
Which is why, it seems, those who are critical of the former First Lady/U.S. Senator/Secretary of State seem very invested in crushing this creeping sense of inevitability about her 2016 prospects.
On the right, we have seen a lot of "she's really not that popular, folks" (here is a nice little tweet in that vein).
And, now, we are seeing a similar pushback on the left. Late in January, a handful of wealthy Democrats still pining for an Elizabeth Warren candidacy financed a survey that had a battery of message-testing questions clearly designed to show that Clinton had vulnerabilities on a whole host of issues, ones that could hamstring her both in the primary and in the general election.
Make no mistake—there is potential merit in both efforts at pushback, on the right and the left. However, there are also substantial issues with both critiques, and the fact remains that Hillary Clinton is arguably in a more enviable position heading into a presidential election cycle than anyone in over a generation. Follow me past the fold to look at why these critiques of the "Clinton inevitability" are more nuanced than they appear, and why Clinton might be in a more commanding position than any of the "frontrunners" of the recent past.
For those who did not bother clicking on the tweet alluded to in the intro: here you go:
Dobson is one of the more engaging Twitter presences on the political right, and his background in polling makes him someone that political junkies already have a working familiarity with. But he's being perhaps just a little cute here.
HuffPo/Pollster's default range on the y-axis (percentages, typically) run between 10-70, but Dobson switched it instead to a range 30-60, to make the tightening of the graph look sharper. Now, there's nothing inherently evil in that (I've done it myself, to try to detect slight trends in numbers that, by and large, have stayed within the 40 yard lines, so to speak), but it does tend to exaggerate trends. If you use the default Pollster parameters, for example, that graph looks more like this:
While the trajectory is still not splendid for team Clinton, that doesn't give the same visual impact of "collapsing support" that Dobson's tweet elicits.
Circumstances look even less perilous for Clinton when one excludes a single pollster. Given that the appetite for Hillary Clinton's favorabilities (especially two or three years out from the 2016 election) is not terribly high, there has been a relative paucity of polling on the matter. The lone exception to this relative data blackout is a single source: YouGov. The internet panel-based pollster polls on Clinton's fav/unfav on a weekly basis, which allows them to flood the zone. Indeed, 22 of the last 28 polls on Clinton's standing (dating back to last July) have come from YouGov.
And as it happens, the lone pollster is also far more bearish on the presumptive Democratic frontrunner than anyone else, it would seem. According to HuffPo/Pollster, Hillary Clinton's fav/unfav has been tested a dozen times since the midterms. Eight of those polls have been YouGov surveys, and she has treaded water, with a net fav/unfav of 47/46. Four of those polls have come from elsewhere. In those four polls, there is tangible difference. While Clinton's favorable ratings are not markedly different (49 percent), her unfavorable ratings are down several points from YouGov (40 percent).
Indeed, if you take YouGov out of the equation, and run the same graph that Dobson used, it looks like this instead:
Now it cannot be ignored that while Dobson might have been a bit clever in magnifying the appearance of the impact, there is still clear evidence of tightening in the graph, even if you exclude YouGov and use the default parameters. That it no longer looks like the complete collapse of support that initial tweet implied does not it mean that it is not a cause for alarm.
Clinton critics credibly could argue that should that trend continue as the campaign cycle wears on, she is liable to be exceptionally vulnerable in 20 months. But Clinton advocates could argue, with equal credibility, that she has been a primary target of conservatives (and some disenchanted liberals) for literally decades at this point, has universal name recognition, and still has a net positive favorability rating, a positive rating that none of her potential GOP opponents has managed to consistently register.
And, indeed, that is where much of the optimism in camp Clinton undoubtedly lies. Early polling is just that: early. But the early numbers for 2016 paint a picture that cannot be very satisfying for Republicans seeking to derail the Democratic frontrunner. Their likely alternatives are, by and large, getting thumped by Clinton in early trial heats. As an example, the RCP polling averages for the half-dozen most likely Clinton vs. GOP matchups show that no Republican candidate averages closer than an 8-point deficit to the Democrat.
Meanwhile, a series of battleground state polls released this week by Quinnipiac were nothing short of stunning. In the critical swing states of Florida and Ohio (as well as Pennsylvania, which pundits have cited as a key 2016 GOP target), Clinton not only crushed most of the GOP field by double digits, but also led favorite sons in all three states. In Florida, a state Obama won by under a point, her average lead was nearly 12 points. In Ohio, a state Obama won by a 51-48 margin, Clinton led by over 10 points. In Pennsylvania, where Obama won by a markedly reduced margin in 2012, Clinton's average lead was 17.
Those numbers have to be sending off enormous alarms in GOP circles. If one accepts the premise that the GOP already faces a slight generic headwind in the Electoral College (and the evidence is there, even if it is far from overwhelming), then one has to assume that the GOP has to hold its states and pick off several Obama 2008/12 states. If the Q poll is anywhere close to correct, three of the closest Obama 2012 states are effectively out of reach. Meanwhile, national polls, with only rare exceptions, have Clinton ahead of all GOP comers by at least as much as Obama won in 2012. The only saving grace for the GOP may well be that their current flavor of the month (Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker) has been featured in nearly none of those polls.
Indeed, one of the few polls of recent vintage that shows Clinton without a commanding lead over her GOP rivals (and did poll Walker, showing Clinton with a three-point edge) is the aforementioned PPP poll that sought to highlight Clinton's liabilities.
But in a poll that was commissioned to explore her vulnerabilities, particularly (it would seem) with voters on the left, it is telling that the sponsors of the poll did not ask the pollster to look at how Warren, or other prominent Democrats, would stack up against Clinton.
Then again, a quick glance at this chart (put together by our own Dreaminonempty) may well make it clear why the folks who commissioned the poll demurred from primary election trial heats:
Clinton may well have been a frontrunner back in 2008, and may have even been seen as "inevitable" to some back then, but she starts this cycle in a considerably more enviable position, from a polling perspective. In a piece by the Fix's Sean Sullivan this week, he interpreted
a UNH poll in the Granite State as a bad sign for Clinton, because only 7 percent have "definitely decided" on their pick (eleven months out!). But he also notes that, at present, Clinton has a 44-point lead, despite the fact that two of the more viable potential Democrats (Sen. Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders) hail from states that neighbor New Hampshire, and might have at least a little "home base" appeal. On a related note, none of those recognizable potential rivals for the nomination
couldn't get closer than 19 points in a Gravis poll of New Hampshire this week. If the best you can get, in arguably your most favorable terrain, is down 44-25, that could act as a bit of a deterrent.
Indeed, Clinton's early "edge," such as it is, is that she is perceived (and the data supports this, by and large) as the clear frontrunner in both the Democratic primary and the general election. We really haven't seen that combination in decades. Some were facing perilous primaries, but their party looked, on paper, to be in an enviable position in the general (see: 2008). On other occasions, there was no primary action, but the general election outcome was in doubt (see: 2004 and 2012).
In fact, the last campaign in the same solid early position as Clinton might well be a cautionary tale for team Hillary. That is because one could argue that the last presidential candidate to be such an unambiguous frontrunner, in both primary and general election polling, was George W. Bush.
Given the ultimate outcome (which was ... ahem ... highly ambiguous), it is hard to remember that there was a time when Bush looked like somewhat of a lock, not just in the 2000 GOP primary, but when paired against Al Gore, as well. In fact, a quick glance at polls from almost 16 years ago today tell us the tale of the tape:
- A March 1999 CNN poll not only had Bush leading Al Gore by a healthy 52-41 margin, but it also had Bush leading a provisional GOP primary field of 10 candidates with 48 percent of the vote (and a healthy 31-point edge over his nearest rival, Elizabeth Dole).
- An April 1999 Pew poll had Bush leading Gore by a 54-41 margin, even as the poll also showed that President Bill Clinton had a 62-percent approval rating.
- A spate of polls from this exact point in the cycle (February 1999) showed George W. Bush with leads ranging from 10 to 21 points over Al Gore.
Surely those general election polls are instructive, because they show that no lead is insurmountable, even in a presidential election in which name recognition is practically universal. But the early primary polls are, in their own right, instructive.
The CNN poll linked above, taken in March 1999, had John McCain at 3 percent, and in a tie for fifth place with Steve Forbes. By the second month of the primary season, McCain was in the 30s, and though he never quite materialized as a mortal threat to Bush's nomination, he threw a legitimate scare into Team Bush.
Will someone materialize that will put team Clinton on high alert? Will the GOP coalesce around a candidate and storm back into a lead? The answers could very well be "yes" and "yes". However, Hillary Clinton starts out in as good a position, and quite possibly a better one, than even Bush found himself in 16 years ago.
If you are a Clinton supporter, and want to feel a surge of optimism, consider this challenge: Name a presidential candidate who was in this solid a position at this point in the cycle, and didn't win? (Political historians can argue that one out in the comments.)
Pessimistic political Eeyores, meanwhile, can state what is obviously true: Just because it hasn't happened in a long while, doesn't mean it won't happen this time.