Good news, bad news for candidates in Newsweek poll

March 8, 2008

Barack Obama got a bump in the polls after he pulled off 11 consecutive victories in February, and now Hillary Clinton is also getting a bump after winning in Texas and Ohio this week.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island have revived her near-dead campaign and brought her into a statistical dead heat with Sen. Barack Obama among registered Democrats and Democratic leaners, according to a new national NEWSWEEK Poll. The survey found that Clinton has erased the once-commanding lead that Obama held in most national polls following his 11 straight victories in February’s primaries and caucuses. Obama is the favored nominee among 45 percent of Democrats, compared with 44 percent for Clinton, according to the poll. […]

What’s striking is that the fundamentals remain largely the same. Obama gets overwhelming support from blacks (80 percent to 10 percent), those under 40 (60 percent to 35 percent) and voters who have graduated from college (50 percent to 41 percent); Hillary wins the majority of whites (53 percent to 35 percent), voters over 60 (51 percent to 33 percent) and those who have a high-school education or less (48 percent to 38 percent). Along gender lines, Obama wins male voters by a 10-point margin (50 percent to 40 percent), while Clinton retains her lead with female voters (46 percent to 40 percent).

Clinton wins on “experience”; Obama leads on “change.” Clinton leads on “preparedness”; Obama leads on ability to “inspire the country” and “bring people together.”

As for the much-scrutinized “3 a.m.” ad, it’s a mixed bag. 45% of poll respondents said they would trust Clinton to answer the call, while a third said the same about Obama. That said, most primary voters don’t rank terrorism at the top of their priority list. Newsweek added, “When all voters were asked which of the three candidates they would most trust to take a 3 a.m. call, the largest number pointed to McCain (45 percent), followed by Clinton (27 percent) and Obama (18 percent). Almost a fifth of Clinton’s supporters say that they would trust McCain more to take the call.”

Perhaps more troubling for the Clinton campaign, is the “polarizing” question: “The poll also shows that Clinton remains a divisive figure: a full 40 percent of registered voters hold an unfavorable opinion of her, compared with 35 percent for McCain and only 28 percent for Obama.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the poll, though, was the data on what superdelegates should do.

I’ve generally assumed that voters wanted — and probably expected — superdelegates to follow the will of voters. If one candidate earned more delegates, and insiders backed the second-place candidate, it’d be more than a little controversial.

Or maybe not.

Should neither Clinton nor Obama secure enough delegates to win the nomination (a scenario that looks increasingly likely), 43 percent of Democrats said they would prefer that the candidate trailing in the delegate count concede the nomination, while 42 percent think superdelegates should choose the nominee. Should the ball end up in the superdelegates’ court, most respondents (42 percent) think they should choose the best-qualified nominee in their judgment, while 38 percent believe they should choose the person with the popular vote lead.

Something to keep an eye on.

Once the news that part of Hillary’s overhyped foreign policy experience includes traveling to the former Yugoslavia with SINBAD gets out, it’s goodbye, WALNUTS, hello SINBAD! LOL

  • I didn’t hold an unfavorable opinion of Clinton before her tactics in this primary. I was worried about Obama being too bipartisan, but I don’t know what to call what Clinton does. Is it bipartisan, pandering, or just Republicanism?

    What’s up with Sinbard anyway. Is he famous for being famous or what?

  • Only 42% of the 42% who want the superduperdelagates to choose the nominee want them to use their own judgment. That equals 18% of the total sample.

    For everyone else, apparently it’s just a disagreement about whether popular vote trumps delegate count. 38% of 42% (16% of the total sample) want superduperdelegates to make popular vote trump delegate count.

    That works out to:

    43% – Delegate count leader should win (via trailer conceding)
    18% – Superduperdelegates should use their own judgment
    16% – Superduperdelegates should pick the popular vote leader

  • Is it bipartisan, pandering, or just Republicanism?

    It’s called “centrism”. I’m not sure how all this went down the memoryhole, but the Clintons were the poster children of the DLC centrist movement and remain so to this day. In their case, it means that they’ll cozy right up on the inside of whatever their opponent is saying he’ll do; so that they’ll always be on whichever side has more popular support..

    If the opponent is a Republican and polls show that a slight majority is to the left of the Republican position, then they’ll go slightly to the left of whatever the Republicans demand. And then, when Republicans finally got pressured into accepting the compromise, the Clintons claim victory. But the joke always is that they were giving the Republicans almost everything they wanted; so even when the Republicans lost, they won. Republicans were playing the long-game, and kept letting the Clintons score short-term points while they kept moving the goal posts.

    And now we see Hillary doing the same thing in a Democratic primary. Because she’s appealing to a liberal audience, she’s emphasizing how her positions are slightly to the left of Obama’s. But even more importantly, she’s emphasixing what a fighter she is, to appeal to people who want a president to fight Republicans and get a little payback for all the Bushies did wrong. But Hillary entered the Senate at the same time Bush took the Whitehouse, and we haven’t seen even a tiny bit of fight from Hillary. No filibusters. No hardball tactics. She basically went right along with what just about any Democrat does in the Senate; which hasn’t shown much of a fight.

    But I can guarantee you that if Hillary somehow makes it to general election, she’s won’t be talking about fighting as much, or how liberal her policies are. Nor will experience be held as the primary qualifier for presidenting, as even this post shows that people trust McCain more than her. Instead, you’re going to hear a lot about how “tough” her foreign policy will be.

    And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I liked this even the first time; when it was called the Clinton Administration. While I supported Bill in the 90’s, I never liked it. And it was mainly because of this kind of position-shifting thing. The truth is that the Clintons don’t take positions, they are positioning; and every issue is always in flux. And that’s why everything Hillary says has such a “That was then, this is now” quality to it. Because they’ll only say what they need to say, until they no longer need to say it that way. And then everything shifts.

    With Obama, I see someone who is positioning themselves to be able to use “bi-partisan” as a weapon against Republicans who oppose him. But he won’t need to change a word of what he’s saying when he gets to the general election, which is why he has such a broad appeal; because he’s not just going after fighting progressives; he’s going after everyone. He’s saying the same stuff now that he’ll say during the general, and the same he’ll say as president. Whether or not he’s truly a principled person, he’s a least smart enough to understand how principles are an asset to political campaigns, and not the hinderance the Clintons and the Bushies believe it to be (no moral equivalenc intended). .Honesty really is the best policy.

  • “Should the ball end up in the superdelegates’ court, most respondents (42 percent) think they should choose the best-qualified nominee in their judgment, while 38 percent believe they should choose the person with the popular vote lead.”

    That question is deceptive. You could make a strong argument that most people believe that the person with the most delegates IS the best-qualified nominee. Whoever the nominee is, their first job will be to lock up 270 electoral votes. If someone wins the popular vote but loses in delegates, that begs comparison with Gore in 2000. The best qualified nominee is the one who can be the Bush of 2008 if it comes to a nail-biter in November.

    The question also assumes that the superdelegates’ decision will not impact the chances of whoever they do choose. Which of course it will. Worse, if their pick loses in November, it will implicate the entire party in the defeat, rather than just a single candidate. That is actually one of the reasons the Democrats took so long to come back after the Mondale defeat in 1984. The majority of Democrats in Washington signed off on Mondale and it looked bad on them when he was demolished by Reagan. It would have gone even worse for them if they had chosen Hart and he had lost just as badly. It would have made it seem as though voters tried to pick the best candidate and a collection of out of touch morons threw their efforts away.

  • Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island…

    Yeah, resounding victory in Texas where Obama actually got more delegates.

  • Um, it takes 2024 to win — Obama won’t get that without the SDs. Stop spreading misinformation.

  • All that “who would you trust at 3:00 AM” bullshit is continuing to presuppose that the candidate himself/herself would not only answer the call, but decide what would be best to do about it, unassisted by subject-matter experts. Nonsense!!!! Why are voters such sheep, so easily stampeded into this corner or that? John Sidney McCain’s military experience is ANCIENT – why does he get the nod for most able to handle a national security crisis?

  • Hillary’s universal health care plan in 1993 was not an example of triangulating or just staying barely to the left of Republicans. She staked her reputation on it and it was one of the two centerpieces of the first Clinton administration. The other was deficit reduction, which they accomplished without any Republican support whatsoever. It (including the tax increase) probably cost Democrats the majority in Congress more than any Contract With America BS from Gingrich. In his second term Bill Clinton did the best he could with the opposition controlling Congress.

    It was pretty widely known at the time that Hillary dissented with the draconian aspects of Welfare Reform in 1996, too, and opposed it.

    She’s staked a position to the right of Obama on military matters and to his left on universal health care. Obama makes the same kind of calculations too. Any intelligent politician (a winning one anyway) has to consider where public sentiment is.

  • Obviously, the most qualified candidate should be our next president.

    Neither Clinton nor Obama will have the required delegates to win, nor will either probably be enough ahead of the other in votes to win.

    If one is chosen over the other we risk the incredible ire and disappointment of voters–possibly splitting the party. This has been such a charged and motivated electorate.

    The super delegates will probably have to decide.

    It seems that the fairest and perhaps the wisest decision would be to broker a match between the two with the more experienced candidate as the president and the other as Vice President.

    This could not only insure the election for the democratic party, but another 16 years of rule.

  • Why are we taking national polls? We just had the ultimate poll. It’s called THE ELECTION, where 40 states have voted already. GEEZ.

    Maybe next week we can find out if Bush still leads Gore, or if Bush being elected gave him a bit of a bump.

  • Dale, Dr. Biobrain (what happened to Hussein?)

    There are – in my very humble opinion – multiple ways to be “centrist” or bipartisan. I was initially somewhat troubled by Obama’s rhetoric on this point too. But i’ve come to understand (or at least i hope i understand it correctly) where he’s coming from and where he’s going with it. First, he approaches situations as a mediator would; bringing different viewpoints together in an attempt to reach consensus. I don’t know if this is classic community organizer, but it is a classic diplomatic tack. Second, i really don’t think that he’s talking about doing what the rabid right wants him to do, but rather approaching the sane conservatives and the moderate Republicans. It’s something he can probably pull off, because he isn’t rabidly left.

    That’s a whole lot different than what Clinton did with his “centrism”. That was an example of adopting right wing ideas and passing them off as liberal. From the history i’ve read (and what i remember), they never tried to get moderate Republicans to come to them. They went to the right of their own free will; moreover, they never got assurance from those on the right that they’d get something back. Consequently, they lost the respect of both the left and the right.

    Re pfgr @10: they certainly did stake their reputations on health care reform. The also refused to listen to anyone on it…not members of their own party, not people with long experience as health policy experts, not moderate Republicans, not even the groups that they would need support from. They bungled health care reform badly. Don’t forget that Clinton also hung House Dems out to dry with his first budget (the BTU tax: he told them he’d back them all the way so they walked the plank for him…then he caved on it in the Senate)

  • Obama does not support universal health care for adults. In that sense, Clinton is to the left of Obama. Obama’s economic advisors can hardly be called liberal either. He is more conservative on several issues than she is. Not saying don’t vote for him, just know where he stands.

  • The idea that Obama does not support universal health care for adults is wrong, as is the notion that “Clinton is to the left of Obama” on this issue. As for economics, the fact that he has the backing of Robert Reich should say something (note: Reich on Colbert).

    Hillary has claimed that mandates are necessary because Medicare, Social Security, etc., are not optional programs, so health care insurance shouldn’t be either. She also says that access to healthcare is a “human right.” Now, that all sounds nice, except that her solution is to make us all buy insurance from private companies, which may or may not be more affordable. In other words, she justifies her position by the false comparison to two very successful *government* programs, as if she were proposing something as equitable as a state-run healthcare system, which she is not. Instead, it is an obligation to buy a high-priced service from private companies or face stiff fines. That sounds like a wonderful gift to the insurance companies, and it sounds just as impractical as it is morally, economically, and ethically unsound. Its one thing to pay taxes to a government that we, the people (at least in theory) control; it is another thing to be forced to pay money to a for-profit company just to have the privilege of having a body. The latter simply is *not* a left position in any substantive way that I can think of.

    Also, if it is a “human right” as she claims, why on earth would she then leave it in the hands of an industry with a long history of screwing over its clients? In other words, this is hardly “to the left” of anything; it is typical “corporations should be in charge of everything” solution of what in any other country would be the political right.

    As for Obama, his overall position is more attractive, even if I find it not as much to my liking as I might hope. He is on record as stating that ideally we would have a single-payer, national system “if we were starting from square one.” Since we are not, what he proposes is something very similar to Clinton’s, but without the *obligation* to finance Aetna, etc., if we are either unwilling or unable. He is convinced that he can make costs come down to the point where everyone who is willing will be able to buy insurance. Nothing suggest that he would be any less successful in lowering costs than Clinton; on the contrary, his plan places greater emphasis on this than does her’s.

    In other words, Obama doesn’t engage in the rhetoric of Hillary Clinton, talking about healthcare as a “human right” — only to show how much she is just engaging in rhetorical slight of hand by then entrusting it to private companies with a terrible track record. (And she has the gall to criticize him for his rhetoric…) He has taken the pragmatic position that the ideal solution is not politically viable (I am not so sure), but also that it wouldn’t be right to force people to pay a tax to a private corporation for the simple fact that they have a body. This is an imperfect solution (if the Canadians can pull off a national health care system without succumbing to Stalinist totalitarianism, I don’t see why would can’t either…), but by not obliging people to fund private, for-profit industries with enormous profit margins qualifies in my book as being “to the left” of what Hillary Clinton is proposing.

  • Obama’s own statements regarding universal health care indicate coverage for children only not adults. I don’t know how you change that fact. So Clinton’s stance is to the left of Obama’s. Obama’s primary economic advisor (of the NAFTA remarks fame) is a free-market economist just like those supporting our current administration. Also he is not an atin-war candidate in the purest sense, either. He only condemns “dumb wars.” His comments. How do you spin that? You’re deceiving yourselves.

  • Further, Clinton has owned the universal health care issue for some twenty years now. As someone who championed it early on against large odds, this is truly her issue, not his.
    Also both Edwards and Kucinich have a greater claim to the positions of the liberal left than Obama has had. He is a centrist candidate in policy; a candidate for change in rhetoric.

  • “Commanding lead”!? When did either candidate hold a commanding lead in national polls? I don’t see any numbers backing that up.

    This article makes it seem as though Hillary Clinton has turned this entire thing around – despite the fact that she has already lost. Mathematically, it is nearly impossible that Hillary can win.

  • “42 percent think superdelegates should choose the nominee. ”

    ….I bet they were all Clinton supporters.

    …Neither candidate will be the one to pick up the phone at 3 AM. If Hillary is elected President, it’ll be Bill Clinton, because the phone will be on his side of the bed.

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