Poll: Democrats’ Concern Is Candidate Electibility

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Politics.
Dec 18th, 2007 | 8 responses

A new USA Today/Gallup Poll now solidifies the debate within the Democratic party over electibility: it finds that Democratic voters above all want a candidate who has a good chance of being elected — something of a shift for the Democrats.

And the poll shows its yet another piece of good news for Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

This is likely to mean a bigger scramble than ever among the top three Democratic candidates — Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards — to show show how they are more likely to win and their opponents are more likely to lose. It means, more than ever, a campaign in which they will try to overcome possible voter objections to themselves and bring out and accentuate possible voter objections to their foes.

A close look at the article on the poll perhaps gives some clues as to where this is going:

Democratic voters increasingly are focused on nominating the most electable presidential candidate, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama fares better than New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton against prospective Republican rivals.

Less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the nationwide survey finds races in both parties that are fluid enough to defy predictions and could be reshaped by results from the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

So all of the commentary, news analysis and (yes) blog reports could be outdated quite quickly.

Among Republicans, five candidates are in competitive positions — four of them effectively tied for second place. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to lead, supported by 27% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

Among Democrats, Clinton is backed by 45% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, up 6 percentage points from a poll taken two weeks earlier that showed her standing eroding. The modest rebound came despite recent controversy over the tone of her campaign toward Obama.

But further down in the story there’s bad news for Clinton: she leads the pack in evoking the strongest positive and negative reactions, She’s the top choice when asked which one would make a “great” AND a “terrible” President.

In a shift, Democratic voters are almost evenly divided between those who want a nominee who agrees with them on almost all issues and those who want one with the best chance of beating the Republican. Last month, they preferred an ideological match by 3-2.

That’s a huge shift indicating:

–Democratic voters have become more pragmatic.

–Democratic voters are perhaps in 2008 now coming closer to how Republicans were in 2000 when Republicans were willing to swallow their pride on some differences because of their unifying thirst for regaining control of the White House.

Meanwhile, ideological purity remains a key value on the Republican side:

Republican voters by about 3-2 continue to want a nominee who agrees with them on most issues — a sign, perhaps that ideological differences among the GOP contenders remain a significant factor.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was second among Republicans, at 16%. Tied at 14% were Arizona Sen. John McCain, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

In hypothetical matchups for the general presidential election, Clinton and Obama each led Giuliani, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Romney, although at times narrowly.

Obama was somewhat stronger, besting Giuliani by 6 points, Huckabee by 11 and Romney by 18. Clinton had an edge of 1 point over Giuliani, 9 points over Huckabee and 6 points over Romney.

So what’s likely to come? Read this quote:

Clinton strategist Mark Penn says efforts to compare the general-election appeal of the two leading Democrats are “not realistic … because people don’t have much information about (Obama).”

So what kind of information is likely to be supplied to voters about Obama? The process seems to be underway already…

8 Responses to “Poll: Democrats’ Concern Is Candidate Electibility”

1. DLS says:

   December 18, 2007 at 12:41 pm

   Thompson’s nothing. I agreed with what I read elsewhere, earlier, that the Dems have their “big three,” without question (Clinton, Obama, Edwards) and the GOP have four serious candidates (Giuliani, Romney, McCain, and Huckabee). It remains to be seen how well Huckabee will do after the Iowa caucuses. I do not know why McCain has any decent standing as a candidate, but he does.

   The Pew report about Democrats that was made public earlier this month (here) discusses electability of the candidates as one of the issues.

   Related to this is the newest report from Pew (here) ,which discusses issues on the public’s mind in 2007. Among them are:

   * A political landscape favoring Democrats

   * GOP blues

   I suspect that electability rather than policy positions on various issues will be behind more Democratic votes than is currently suspected. I suspect the Democratic voters want first and foremost to see a Democrat put in the White House, in order to fully enjoy the “end of Bush” parties they will want to have on Election Night and on Inauguration Day.
2. DJShay says:

   December 18, 2007 at 1:11 pm

   You should have mentioned that Edwards has better electability ratings than Clinton and Obama according to this Cnn poll
3. superdestroyer says:

   December 18, 2007 at 1:58 pm

   You must have to be numerically illiterate to be a political writer. Just look at the numbers. The Democrats will win every state that they carried in 2004 while spending almost nothing to do it. The Republicans are behind in states that they carried in 2004 such as Missouri, Colorado, Virginia, etc. Any Democratic candidates who does not make a major mistake should be able to easily win.

   The real question is whether the Democratic Party gets 60 seats in the Senate in 2008 or has to wait until 2010. Of course, Senate races are too boring for political writers to write about. The most underreported story in how over 100 Democrats running for re-election for Congress are currently running unopposed.

   The other underreported election is how the Republicans have stopped being a national party. Just look at the story in the Washington Post that most independents are actually Democrats but just do not want to admit it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121700502.html
4. DLS says:

   December 18, 2007 at 2:17 pm

   Independents often are kids, who are liberal, who view registering as a Democrat as uncool old people’s behavior. (A few may be so far left they believe the lie that the Democrats aren’t liberal, and they’re holding out for the Green Party or the New Party, etc.)

   The Pew polls consistently show so-called (self-named) “independent” voters as voting in patterns just like Democrats.

   That’s true also, by the way, of the so-called “moderates” [sic] on this so-called “moderate” [sic] Web site.

   SD, I do not share your view of doom for this country. Sooner or later the GOP will regain its senses or be taken over by others who can offer Americans a positive, constructive alternative to an ever-growing welfare state in Washington who is our surrogate parent with benefits and entitlements for all. If they concentrated merely on being the party better representing than they do the people who pay the bills in this country, as opposed to the dependent, greedy, impatient children whose votes are bought with promises of More Goodies, they might do better, especially in the coming years when tax increases will be imperative (along with benefit reductions where politically possible) to maintain Social Security and Medicare.
5. DLS says:

   December 18, 2007 at 2:29 pm

   Just look at the story in the Washington Post

   Note that this coming election it may be 2006 revisited, with a lot of dissatisfaction with Bush and the Iraq war. If it’s substantial enough, even many normally-Republican voters (as in 2006) may vote Democratic.
6. Idiosyncrat says:

   December 18, 2007 at 2:37 pm

   Mark Blumenthal at pollster.com discusses the possibility of priming and order-effect on the results of the poll Joe cited. The Gallups and Pews of the world are quite cognizant of these effects, but it’s interesting to consider nonetheless. We won’t know until the dust settles tho…
7. DLS says:

   December 18, 2007 at 2:41 pm

   Pew report on Democratic voters,

   * view of most electable, USA overall, Clinton is at 62%, Obama 12%, Edwards 11%. It’s 48-18-15 in Iowa, 56-16-12 in New Hampshire, and 60-17-8 in South Carolina.

   * refusal to vote for a specific candidate, USA overall, Clinton is at 9%, Obama 8%, Edwards 6%. It’s 18-3-3 in Iowa, 15-6-2 in New Hampshire, and 8-8-4 in South Carolina.

   Meanwhile, there’s some interesting additional reading to be found:

   Indeed, Hillary’s entire campaign has been grounded in her experience in the Clinton administration of the 1990s, even though that experience mostly involves designing a failed healthcare plan and unsuccessfully hectoring her husband to move to the left. …

   But schadenfreude doesn’t really do justice to Hillary’s potential downfall. Her career is indisputably a product of her marriage — no one running on her experience as first lady could claim otherwise. But for most of her life, Hillary had an independent ideological identity that seems to have gone down the memory hole. In her own words, she championed a whole new “politics of meaning” and sought to redefine “who we are as human beings in this postmodern age.”

   But, bit by bit, she sliced off chunks of her soul. Hillary used to be the personification of hope for the left. On the welfare debate, she was supposed to be Bill’s conscience. She was the Eleanor to his Franklin.

   But now Hillary is the Democrats’ establishment candidate, pitted against the true believer, John Edwards, and the idealist, Barack Obama. Even committed liberals tell focus groups she’s too cold, too calculating.

   Heh, heh. The return of Clinton polarization could do her in.
8. DLS says:

   December 18, 2007 at 2:43 pm

   comments in the Post related to the Clintons here