Rather often, Bernie supporters claim that Bernie polls better than Hillary Clinton against Republicans in a general election in either battleground states (with electoral votes), nationally (which in 53/57 American elections corresponds to the ultimate election winner), or both.
Some polls show this to be true, some polls show it to be false, and some polls show it to be arguably false (eg. when MoE is 3 and Bernie is beating Rubio by 2, Hillary beating him by 1).
Trying to read tea leaves this early in the year, in January/February of the election year tho, has its pitfalls:
“Not only is Bernie Sanders electable in the general election,” insisted Sanders senior adviser Tad Devine, “he’s a stronger candidate than Hillary Clinton in the general election.”
Indeed, public pollsters who’ve conducted surveys in both Iowa and New Hampshire caution that the Sanders team might be misreading the data the campaign is relying on to make its case that Sanders would broaden the Democratic electorate and make more states competitive by luring young, more independently minded voters.
Patrick Murray, who runs the Monmouth University Polling Institute in New Jersey, said the independent voters who are backing Sanders in the primary are more liberal in orientation and would be likely to vote for the Democrat in November anyway.
…
National polls of general-election matchups are unreliable measures at this stage of the campaign, and they render an inconclusive verdict on which Democrat is more electable. Estimations by the website HuffPollster show both candidates running similarly against the three top GOP candidates: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
Not only that, but here’s another piece of this, which I’ve talked about:
The Clinton campaign, along with much of the Democratic establishment, believes those numbers would change in a general election. Republicans would attack Sanders as a tax-raising socialist they say.
“Socialist” could be a one-word silver bullet against Sanders: A Pew Research Center poll in late 2011 found a majority of Americans, 60 percent, had an unfavorable opinion of socialism, compared to 31 percent who had a favorable opinion.
You can find it in a graph (and a previous diary of mine):
Additionally, Nate Silver wrote a great piece a few weeks ago:
Since 1944, general election polls around a year [9.5 months now, still close to a year] before Election Day — where we are now — have only been weakly predictive of the eventual result.
If you look at polls that tested the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees in the last two months of the year before the election, the average absolute error of the polling average is 10.6 percentage points. That’s more than five times Ben Carson’s [then]current lead over Hillary Clinton in the Pollster.com. As you can see in the table below, 12 of the 14 elections1 for which we have polling data featured an error greater than Carson’s edge.
|
POLLING ACCURACY A YEAR BEFORE THE ELECTION |
ELECTION |
AVERAGE GOP POLL LEAD |
GOP ELECTION MARGIN |
ABSOLUTE ERROR |
1964 |
-50.3 |
-22.6 |
27.7 |
1992 |
+21.0 |
-5.6 |
26.1 |
1980 |
-15.5 |
+9.7 |
25.2 |
2000 |
+11.9 |
-0.5 |
12.4 |
1984 |
+7.2 |
+18.2 |
11.0 |
1988 |
+18.0 |
+7.7 |
10.3 |
2008 |
-0.3 |
-7.3 |
6.9 |
1956 |
+22.0 |
+15.4 |
6.6 |
1944 |
-14.0 |
-7.5 |
6.5 |
2004 |
+8.7 |
+2.5 |
6.2 |
1996 |
-13.0 |
-8.5 |
4.5 |
1960 |
+3.0 |
-0.2 |
3.2 |
2012 |
-2.8 |
-3.9 |
1.0 |
1948 |
-3.8 |
-4.5 |
0.7 |
Average |
|
|
10.6 |
...
[T]he early polls … had Jimmy Carter defeating Ronald Reagan by 16 percentage points in the 1980 election. The Iran hostage crisis initially boosted Carter’s standing, but that didn’t last, and Reagan won by 10 percentage points that November.
There you have it. Clearly, those way-too-early-polls where Tad Devine claims Bernie is somehow more “electable” is laughable. Not a surprise coming from a guy with the kind of winning record Tad has. At the end of the day, fundamentals, like the incumbent Prez’s job approvals, the economic change from beginning of one party’s WH rule to the most recent point, and whether a candidate has a scarlet letter, or whether one is too far to the left or right (like Goldwater, McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis. Sanders would meet this criterion.), will determine this election. National polls will only be useful once the nominating process is thoroughly underway.