Every now and then, a 2008 poll slips through the collective cracks of political junkies everywhere. Thankfully, nothing gets past the good folks at Wikipedia, not even this obscure poll by the American Polling Research Institute that contains some very tasty nuggets with regard to 2008. Unfortunately, I can’t find the actual poll anywhere else on the Web, so I’m unable to dissect the internals. What we do know is this: Rudy, Condi, and McCain would all defeat Hillary Rodham in the general election.
The matchups are as follows:
Condi: 53%; Hillary: 47%
Rudy: 49%; Hillary 40%
McCain: 46%; Hillary: 42%
Newt: 40%; Hillary: 45%
Romney: 39%; Hillary: 48%
Condi also beats Edwards by 5 points. A couple of observations about this poll are below the fold.
First, note that in the Condi/Hillary matchup, there are virtually no undecideds. These two ladies have near-universal name-recognition among likely voters and pretty much everyone has made up their mind on this contest more than two years before the fact. Condi’s ability to garner a 53% majority would make her the best-performing general election candidate since 1988, which was the last time any single candidate received more than 51% of the vote. If Condi were to run, she would immediately be coronated as heir apparent to Bush and would probably juggernaut her way through the primaries, as evidenced by the nomination contest question included in this poll, showing Condi in the lead with 30%, followed by Rudy at 21% and McCain at 20%. To be sure, I highly doubt Condi will run, but if she did, she would be the candidate of the future to Hillary Peron’s candidacy of the past.
Another point: Rudy beats Clinton by the widest margin and garners a near-majority while pushing lots of voters into the undecided column. In that sense, Rudy has the potential to win even bigger than Condi — he’s got 49% support and an additional 11% who are least considering voting for the Mayor. Rudy is another candidate who has the potential to break the polarization of the past few elections and actually unite more than 51% of Americans behind a single candidate.
Third point: oh, how McCain has fallen. Clocking in at only 46%, McCain appears to have lost the support he once enjoyed among independents and Democrats while still being unable to increase his numbers with Republicans.
Fourth point: Newt Gingrich, often considered a possible conservative savior for 2008, is only polling at 40 percent despite fairly solid name recognition as well. I love Newt for what he did in 1994 and beyond, but it’s probably too late for him, and I doubt 2008 will be his year.
Final point: what’s up with Mitt? Romney is one of my favorites for ’08, but pretty much every poll matching him against a Democrat shows two things: 1) the Democrat wins and 2) the Democrat gets close to 50%. If this were due totally to name recognition, the first result would be expected but not the second. That is to say, if Romney were losing to Hillary simply because voters hadn’t heard of Romney, I would expect Romney to be about where he is based on his current name recognition — around 40 percent — and Hillary to be in the lower to mid 40s as well. But instead of resulting in lots of undecideds, a Romney candidacy sends 48% of voters over to Hillary, her largest share of the vote in any of the matchups. What gives?
The fact that I’ve seen this in previous polls suggests to me that there may be a stealth opposition to Romney that the polls aren’t yet picking up. Is it possible that there’s a latent anti-Mormon vote out there that we don’t know about because it’s not a bias that voters are willing to reveal?
June 24th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
the internals
conservatives beat liberals
Seriously, I have a hard time imagining any repub losing to any dem the party would nominate
June 25th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Romney Visits SC
Mitt Romney visited SC this week, making a stop in “upstate” South Carolina (aritcle) [Hat Tip: Race42008]. As well as familiarizing South Carolinians with himself, Mitt was also there to donate money to the local GOP. While there.. He spoke…
June 25th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Nice find, Dave. Interesting results.
My $0.02:
0) “Known Commodities” among the GOP (Condi, Rudy, McCain) would beat any “Known Commodities” among the Dems (HRC, Gore, Edwards)
1) That said, Condi ain’t running.
2) McCain’s fading
3) Rudy would have troubles far beyond what his current numbers indicate (his personal problems just won’t go away)
4) Newt would narrowly beat HRC in the end – in an election with perhaps the lowest turnout in history (“independents” would stay home as neither of these guys offers them anything)
5) Mitt is an unknown commodity among most republicans outside New England (that is, most republicans) – that 9-point lead for HRC is her upper bound and probably represents HRC against a “generic unknown republican” – in other words, 48% is HRC’s upper bound.
Like I said, that’s about $0.02 – at the most.
June 26th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
1. This poll isn’t that much of an indicator of a strong Condi presence. While Condi does beat Hillary, it’s only by six points, almost within the margin-of-error, which is surprising considering her very high approval ratings.
2. McCain is not only fading, but fading fast. He’s lost any momentum, and now is just losing support.
3. Rudy, once again, shows that he’s still got it. And unlike McCain, is going nowhere.
4. I really disagree with your analysis on Newt’s showing. He managed to keep Hillary’s support lower than it was against Condi, and while he did lose to Hillary, it was nearly within the Margin-of-error, and is still a toss-up as of right now. The wild card of course, is the amount of momentum Newt has been riding in order for him to get where he is now at 40%. Just a few years ago, Newt wouldn’t have gotten past 30%, but now he’s within the margin-or-error. Of anything, this poll proved to me that Newt doesn’t have too of a hill to overcome before he’ll winning oall of these 2008 polls.
5. Romney’s finish is surprisingly dissapointing. For all the momentum that I thought he was experiencing, this was a big tell that maybe its not translating. By all means, this poll shows that Romney would get demolished if he were up against Hillary. Which brings back an old theory that hasn’t been brought up at all lately, that ROmney may just not be enough of a “superstar” politician to pull a Presidential campaign off.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
I think it’s interesting that in McCain v. Hillary, only 88% of voters have a good idea of who they would vote for, and in Rudy v. Hillary, only 89% of voters have a good idea of who they would vote for, compared to Condi v. Hillary, where basically 100% of people know who they would vote for. First of all, if this is really the national sentiment, then Hillary will have a heck of a hard time beating Condi in the general election if both women bag their respective parties’ nominations. Condi’s victory over Hillary is, logistically, out of the margin of error, and Condi’s margin over Hillary has been growing bigger and bigger as the months have passed from what I’ve seen in previous polls. For Hillary to win, she would have to convince 3-4% of decided Condi supporters to completely do a 180 and support someone from the exact opposite end of the political spectrum. As people become more educated about where the candidates stand and how they do their jobs, I’ve seemed to notice the following: Condi has been getting more support, Rudy is still approximately where he was before, and McCain is losing support. I think McCain may very well start suffering from the flip-flopper image as he tries to redefine himself as a conservative in the aftermath of his “too moderate”, almost-anti-GOP performance in the past decade.
I think the reason that many people are undecided or do not vote for either candidate when it comes to Rudy v. Hillary and McCain v. Hillary is that Rudy and McCain are both seen as too liberal by the conservative voting base. For many conservatives, it’s a slightly-liberal v. a quite-liberal in these two cases and that might just be a little too unacceptable. Condi, on the other hand, while she is seen as a centrist and a progressive-thinker within the White House, she still holds to old-time conservative values like Judeo-Christian morals and faith, significantly decreasing the role and scope of government, and fiscal responsibility. Though she has been somewhat silent in regards to her opposition to some of the administration’s moves (and rightfully so, considering she could lose her job), in every other facet of her life, she has evidenced herself to be a traditional conservative. She has removed the neo-conservatives from high places in the State Department and changed the administration’s original foreign policy from one of impulsive unilateralism to an emphasis on diplomacy, cooperation, and “waging peace.” Conservatives can rally behind someone like Condi, while they are at a loss when it comes to McCain and Rudy. Although, nearly 90% of voters pick one candidate or the other in those two match-ups, but a great deal of it is probably just a “lesser of two evils” effect I’m guessing.
As far as Romney’s poor showing and Hillary’s triumph in the face of Romney, I think it may show a tiny amount of anti-Mormon sentiment, but a lot of it might have to do with the fact that he’s Northeastern, would probably not be able to carry his own state in a general election, and could jeopardize the GOP’s strength in some Southern states. Alot of it is due to the fact of his dismally low recognition rating among the average Joe’s. In fact, I’d venture to guess that some of the 39% that voted for him didn’t even really know who he was, but simply voted for him in a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that Hillary was on the other end of the ticket. Likewise, a lot of people probably went with Hillary because she was the only one they had heard of and knew where she stood on things. And as for Newt, there is enough scandal to dig up on him for the next hundred years. He’s a smart guy, but he’s seen as irresponsible in his personal life and he just doesn’t seem to have the natural charm, good looks, and (let’s face it) even his awkward-sounding name is kind of a turn-off, and like it or not, a lot of people are highly influenced by these factors that most would consider trivial.
It’s also interesting to note that while the Democratic Party has the potential to garner between 40 and 48% of the votes in a general election, the Republican Party’s voters are a lot more volatile and either-way-ish, and the GOP has the potential to garner between 39 and 53% of the vote — that’s a huge difference, and even though most of the Republican candidates (with the probable exception of Rudy) have almost all the same publicly recorded stances on issues, the Republican vote could be altered severely just depending on the name of the person running.
Lastly, I wouldn’t discount the Draft Condi movement just yet. It’s only mid-2006, and no major candidates have even officially declared yet. A lot could change between now and the beginning of primary season. Also, Condi has never said that would not accept the GOP nomination if she felt she were called to a higher duty or if she started winning primaries as a write-in/draft candidate. She’s simply said that she’s not going to pursue it of her own volition at this time. She’s very carefully worded all of her denials–go state.gov and read through some of her interviews and see for yourselves. I don’t think she really believes she’ll run for president in 2008, and maybe she’s just being prudent about keeping her options open, but she’s never issued a Sherman Oath.
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