Controversial Poll Underscores Hillary Clinton 2008 Electability Debate

Political storm clouds for New York Senator Hillary Clinton?

Two new polls are out and one underscores Senator Hillary Clinton’s “electability problem” as increasingly raised by her Democratic foes and some other analysts.

Clinton’s emerging strategy has rested on her a) inevitability b) access to the highly professional Clinton political machine c) transformation from a polarizing figure to a more nationally-accessible one d) status as the Democrat most likely to be elected in a year when, by most accounts, Democrats have a good chance to win the White House.

But now two new polls don’t provide stellar news for Clinton — or the kind of increasing positive numbers that she needs to stem the current media (and blog) narrative which you could title A Campaign In Trouble (accurate or not). And one of them is such a shift that it could unleash a new slew of media stories since it could create the “conventional wisdom” narrative heading into primaries:

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton trails five top Republican presidential contenders in general election match-ups, a drop in support from this summer, according to a poll released on Monday.

Clinton’s top Democratic rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, still lead Republicans in hypothetical match-ups ahead of the November 4, 2008, presidential election, the survey by Zogby Interactive showed.

The key word is “interactive”: a lot of people don’t trust online interactive polls at all. They could be manipulated by partisans or a faction of a party to undercut a candidate and promote theirs. Still, some critics who don’t trust an online interactive poll tout it far and wide when the results are what they agree with. MORE:

Clinton, a New York senator who has been at the top of the Democratic pack in national polls in the 2008 race, trails Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Mike Huckabee by three to five percentage points in the direct matches.

In July, Clinton narrowly led McCain, an Arizona senator, and held a five-point lead over former New York Mayor Giuliani, a six-point lead over former Tennessee Sen. Thompson and a 10-point lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Romney.

The key point here: even if the methodology is dismissed, it shows a poor TREND: in this poll at least, she is losing supporters — not a good omen some five weeks before the first official national contest in Iowa.

And we always say here “watch the Independent voter”….but in this poll:

The survey showed Clinton not performing as well as Obama and Edwards among independents and younger voters, pollster John Zogby said.

So is this poll strictly a fluke? Do other new polls show her positive numbers and effectively negate a poll that could be characterized as an easy-to-tinker-with online interactive poll?

Not exactly. Another poll shows darkening storm clouds that should be troubling for Clinton, pleasing to her foes, and a big headache for Democrats up for election in 2008 on other parts of the ticket although it doesn’t show a shirt-tail:

A new Gallup Poll finds Sen. Hillary Clinton with a slim but not statistically significant advantage over both former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain in head-to-head matchups for the 2008 general election for president. Clinton has much more substantial leads over former Sen. Fred Thompson and former Gov. Mitt Romney. Sen. Barack Obama also has significant leads over Thompson and Romney, but essentially ties with Giuliani and McCain.

The poll of 897 registered voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 11-14, 2007.

NOT an interactive poll:

Clinton — the dominant front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination — would appear to have at least a slight advantage over any Republican candidate among registered voters if the election were held today. She has a five-point edge over Giuliani (49% to 44%) and a six-point edge over McCain (50% to 44%), but neither lead is statistically significant. Clinton runs much more strongly against the lesser-known Thompson (53% to 40%) and Romney (54% to 38%).

Right now, given the political skill with which he has navigated through his iceberg row of negatives, it appears as if Giuliani will head the GOP ticket. Which means the Demmies would only go into the race with a 5 point lead in the Presidential sweepstakes if Clinton heads the ticket…and it’s “statistically insignificant.” The GOOD NEWS: if Romney does get the nomination he’d be easier to beat than Giuliani (but some anti-Mormon sentiment could also be at play here and presumably the Romney campaign could confront that if need be).

And the TREND?

Gallup previously tested these same matchups in June (Clinton versus Giuliani, McCain, and Romney) and July (Clinton versus Thompson). Since then, Clinton’s standing against Giuliani, McCain, and Romney has remained about the same, while she now fares much better against Thompson. In July, 48% of registered voters preferred Clinton and 45% Thompson.

So here it’s unchanged.

But that isn’t great news for Clinton, either. By this poll’s account, she hasn’t moved her candidacy.

THE WILD-CARDS: Ralph Nader has made noises about running again if Clinton heads the ticket. And New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has mouthed the word “no” but is reportedly cramming on foreign policy issues.

If Nader and Bloomberg (or Bloomberg alone) are in the race, these poll match ups could become one, big “NEVER MIND!”

SOME OTHER WEBLOG OPINION ON THE POLLS:

–Pollster.com analyzes the Zogby poll in a post that MUST be read in full. One key quote:

We can probably rule out one easy explanation: That Clinton has suddenly collapsed and Zogby is just the first to find it. The reason is internal to the Zogby result. If Clinton really has suddenly become 10 points less attractive, we’d expect all four Republicans paired against her to do BETTER than their trend estimates when facing her. But what happens is Clinton goes down and they don’t do any better. That is hard to reconcile with a real change in Clinton’s support.

Read it all.

–Ed Morrissey:

With Zogby’s on-line polling system, one has to remain cautious about putting too much emphasis on any one result. Zogby also doesn’t provide much of its methodology or sampling characteristics on its site. It’s difficult, therefore, to determine whether they oversampled Republicans, which would have created the across-the-board shift seen.

However, other indications exist that tend to decrease the likelihood that this is a sampling error….Clearly, Hillary’s edge has eroded. Democrats have seen her as an inevitability, a candidate who has no peers and no competing organization. They had hoped that a return to the halcyon days of the Clinton administration would appeal to voters without Hillary’s personal negatives impacting their decision. That assumption has been shown false; voters don’t like Hillary in the way they liked Bill, or very much at all regardless of comparison.

--skippy (who writes in lower case):

we ourselves would be hard-pressed to press hard the lever electing hillary clinton president.

addendum: several commentors on the reuters piece pointed out that it was a zogby interactive poll, in which only registered online zogby participants could vote, thus putting the results into question, unlike any other poll we’ve ever heard of.

–Ron Beasley:

Yes Hillary has led the Democratic field, but not with majority numbers, rather a “horse race” first which looks at politics as though highest number means winner. First in the 40% bracket with 6 other candidates doesn’t mean you win, it means 60% back somebody else, even when that person is lagging and written off by the media. Looked at from the Democratic electorate position rather than the ‘neutral’ media position that means that a large piece of the 60% are in the anybody whatever other than Hillary. Looking at the high negatives that may mean that almost the entire 60% will go elsewhere. Her slippage against the other Democrats bodes ill with these numbers coming up, enough Hillary supporters are only there due to her perceived strength against a Republican and her name recognition that slippage may turn into plummet.

–James Joyner:

It’s true that an Obama upset in Iowa could shatter the sense of inevitability that surrounds Clinton and blow the race wide open. Still, that seems incredibly unlikely. She’s not Howard Dean, after all. She’s been in the national spotlight for sixteen years and has the support of the Democratic Establishment. Nor is she prone to unscripted public screams.

On the other hand, her incredibly high negatives — and the fact that something like 40 percent of the electorate will vote for the Republican nominee regardless — put the general election up for grabs. It’s quite conceivable that, even with the wild unpopularity of President Bush, the Iraq War, and the Republican Congress, the GOP nominee could pull out a victory. It’ll be an uphill fight, though.

–Powerline thinks the poll could have been sandbagged by Internet progressives who feel Clinton isn’t far enough left for them:

Much as I would like to believe it, I suspect that this poll result means little. Zogby’s Interactive Poll is conducted on the internet, and I would guess that the Democrats who participate in the survey are more or less representative of the Democrats we encounter on the web. That is, they are far out, as John Denver used to say. Most likely, a number of the Democrats who have signed up for Zogby’s interactive poll are netroots types who dramatize their support for more statist or more pacifist candidates by pretending that they won’t vote for Hillary if she is the nominee.

–No More Mister Niceblog:

The obvious — and wrong — conclusion to draw is that Hillary is the least electable of the three leading Democrats. The correct conclusion to draw is that it’s absurdly easy to drive the supposedly inevitable Democratic nominee, whoever that may turn out to be, into a position where he or she is trailing the Republican — yes, even this year. All it takes is a sustained (even briefly sustained) run of bad press for the Democrat. When something like this happens, it’s inevitably amplified by fellow Democrats in their usual circular-firing-squad mode (and don’t think that’ll stop after the nominee is chosen, because it never does), while the GOP, the right-wing media, and the supposedly neutral but really Democrat-loathing mainstream media seize on the bad press (when they’re not initiating it) and sustain it until the nominee is badly tainted.

It happened to Hillary Clinton over the past few weeks — and if she’s not the nominee, it will happen to whoever beats her.

–The Reaction’s piece must be read in full. Part of it:

Instead of engaging her on the issues, and on her policy positions, many of her critics are bringing up her supposed unelectability as a reason not to support her. (Remember that one of John Kerry’s supposed virtues was his supposed electability.) Either that, or supposedly neutral observers are reading far too much into dubious numbers. Take Zogby himelf: “The questions about her electability have always been there, but as we get close this suggests that is a problem.” Really? Is this a real problem? Or just a problem because people like Zogby — and the unelectability meme is parrotted everywhere — say it is?

….I think “any Democrat” (Clinton or Obama) has a good shot next year. But it won’t be easy.

And it won’t be easy not just because of the Republicans and their dirty tricks but because of pollsters like Zogby and a media establishment that is, in essence, a mouthpiece for the right-wing spin machine.

–My DD’s Jonathan Singer :

What do these numbers mean? Not a whole heck of a lot this far out from election day. But inasmuch as the media continue to obsess about electability — and it’s not all their fault given the consistency with which some candidates have talked about electability — these numbers help defuse the sentiment, at least on the Democratic side, that there are inherent differences within the top tier when it comes to being able to defeat potential Republican nominees.