The conventional wisdom in Dem circles has changed in the last week or so. While Howard Dean has been the frontrunner for a while, the combination of his enormous fundraising advantage, his near-lock on the New Hampshire primary, and key union endorsements from the SEIU and AFSCME have led many to believe that Dean will inevitably win the Democratic nomination. For some, this result is now a foregone conclusion.
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, for example, noted yesterday that the “dominant buzz among the pundit class” is that Dean is “a slam dunk, a done deal, a shoo-in for the nomination.”
While I’m certainly not convinced of this, and heavily-favored candidates have stumbled in the past, Dean’s position as the presumptive nominee has led to a renewed (and spirited) debate over his electability, a question that has circulated among Dem insiders for the better part of a year now.
This week, for example, some of the most-widely read and respected blogs on the web started competing posts on whether Dean could seriously challenge Bush in a general election. Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum insisted that Dean lacked a broad-enough appeal to beat Bush.
Atrios, on the other hand, argued that Dean’s general election prospects are no worse than any of his rivals’.
“There’s no polling data to indicate that Dean is any more or less ‘electable’ than any of the other frontrunners,” Atrios said. While acknowledging that some of Dean’s strengths may be “over-hyped,” Atrios concluded that “there’s nothing in there to indicate why Dean would be worse than the other Dem candidates.”
Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I agree with the Marshall/Drum approach, but in particular, I wanted to refute one of Atrios’ main arguments. There is, in fact, plenty of polling data to indicate Dean would be less electable than his Dem rivals.
While some polls show most of the Dem candidates faring about equally in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups with Bush, most polls show Dean doing the worst among the serious Dem candidates.
A Gallup poll released yesterday, for example, asked Americans how they’d vote in hypothetical trial heats pitting Bush against the top five Dem candidates. While Bush led all five, some Dems did far better than others. Wesley Clark, for example, fared the best, trailing Bush by just three points (50% to 47%). Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman trailed Bush by six points. Dean, meanwhile, did the worst, trailing Bush by nine points (53% to 44%).
Similarly, a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Nov. 1 asked respondents how they’d vote in general election match-ups between Bush and the same five Dems. Though Bush led all five, Kerry and Clark did the best, trailing Bush by single digits, while Dean did the worst, trailing Bush by 15 points.
A Newsweek poll from mid-October showed comparable results. Clark did the best in a general election match-up, with 47% backing Bush and 43% supporting Clark — a 4-point margin. Kerry was the next best, trailing Bush by a 6-point margin. Gephardt was behind Bush by 7 points, Lieberman by 8 points, and, once again, Dean did the worst, trailing Bush by a 9-point margin.
In addition, an Ipsos-Reid poll conducted last week asked respondents how they’d vote in hypothetical match-ups between Bush-Dean and Bush-Gephardt. While Gephardt did poorly, trailing Bush by 15 points (50-35), Dean did even worse, trailing Bush by 18 points (52-34).
Unfortunately for Dean, there are similar trends available at the state level. In a mid-October poll in Pennsylvania — one of the most important battleground states in the nation — Clark fared the best in a head-to-head match-up with Bush, trailing Bush 48 percent to 43 percent — a 5 point margin. Lieberman trailed Bush by 6 points, Kerry by 7 points, and Gephardt by 8 points. And, in a sign we’ve seen a little too often, Dean fared the worst against Bush, trailing by 10 points.
Does this mean Dean is doomed should he win the nomination? Of course not. Polls can change and Bush’s popularity can sink to new depths. The fact remains, however, that Dem voters have a lot of choices with the current field of candidates and we if we want to defeat Bush next year, we’ll need to choose wisely. For us to back a candidate that lacks national appeal may only help guarantee that Bush has another four years in the White House.