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So all of the commentary, news analysis and (yes) blog reports could be outdated quite quickly.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…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.