The Democratic race tightens — a little

November 11, 2007

If anything, Hillary Clinton’s leads in recent polls have almost been too big. As the race for the Democratic nomination tightens, as these races almost always do, it gives the appearance of Clinton faltering and losing momentum.

It’s probably not a fair characterization. After all, when a frontrunner goes from a big double-digit lead to a more modest double-digit lead, she’s still in a strong position.

That said, especially in the early primary states, the gap is narrowing. A new poll from the Boston Globe poll of New Hampshire Democrats shows Hillary Clinton leading the pack with 35%, Barack Obama second with 21%, and John Edwards third with 15%. It’s hard to look askance at a 14-point lead, but the Globe notes that Clinton’s margin has shrunk nine points since September.

A new Marist poll in New Hampshire offers similar results.

Hillary Clinton’s once commanding lead over her Democratic rivals for the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Primary has been nearly halved. Last month, Clinton led her closest competitor, Barack Obama, by 21 percentage points. Now, the gap has narrowed to just 11 percentage points. 36% of likely Democratic presidential primary voters support Senator Clinton followed by 25% for Senator Obama. Former Senator John Edwards receives 14%.

All of this is also in line with the latest Rasmussen data out of New Hampshire, which shows the Democratic race tightening.

As for Iowa, the latest Zogby poll shows an even more competitive race, with Clinton ahead at 28%, followed by Obama with 25%, and Edwards with 21%. Filtering out the undecideds, the race is even closer: Clinton 30%, Obama 29%, Edwards 27%.

The moral of the story: the race isn’t over yet.

The race will tighten a hell of a lot more come January. Hillary’s main strengths are her name and the fact she’s got a ‘D’ behind it. I’ll wager that alone comprises most of the double-digit lead she enjoys — a lead not of substance but one of default. As folks start noticing that there’s more to the other candidates than being black or having great hair, that lead will shrink further.

  • If CNN does some more political sabotage like they did to Pelosi and all of us Dems the other day, maybe the lead will narrow more soon.

    That is, unless all you Dems have anything you can do to effect it.

  • MSM needs a tight race to sell advertising. I know in their heart of hearts every MSM CEO is profoundly sorry we didn’t have another Katrina style hurricane this past summer. Circus and bread, the essence of the news.

    I

  • Episty,
    Obama and Edwards pick up most of the undecideds. That doesn’t bode well for Clinton at all. It sort of proves that her support has pretty much topped out. It will be interesting to see what happens from here.

  • The first comment above is similar to what I stated in a post at Liberal Values yesterday about Clinton’s lead partially being one of default as opposed to substance.

    http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=2365

    “Sometimes there is almost a default candidate for those who have not really decided but prefer to give a name to pollsters. In 2003 those who opposed George Bush and opposed the war typically gave Howard Dean’s name to pollsters after he received all the media hype but this does not mean they necessarily voted for him when given other choices. Similarly Hillary Clinton’s name may be first to come to mind by many voters who want a Democrat to win in 2008, but that does not mean that other Democrats cannot win their votes.”

    Clinton remains a strong front runner, but as the post here concludes, the race isn’t over. Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have barely begun to really decide among the various choices and they typically do this in the final days before the vote. It is unfortunate that the final days before this year’s vote will be over the holidays when voters will have other things on their minds as opposed to deciding who to vote for.

  • It’s a battle between brand loyalty on one side, and both pragmatism and principle on the other.

    Aside from the warm fuzzies the Clinton name evidently generates amongst many Democratic voters, plus the gender thing, I still don’t understand why any progressive would support Hillary Clinton. She’s the least liberal of our contenders, and the most divisive amongst the general electorate. Edwards at least is a true fighting progressive; Obama (my choice) has the potential to transform our politics and finally, finally, finally get us past the battles of the 1960s and their tragicomic echo in the 1990s.

    Please, Iowa and New Hampshire, don’t screw this up for the rest of us again.

  • I’m with dajafi (#6) with a very slight preference for Edwards.

    We, who (obviously) attend to things political between elections, tend to forget that polls sample opinions which can be generated for the pollster but seldom exist among the public until they are measured.

    Kind of a funny version of the Uncertainty Principle: bring out your ruler or microphone or scale or preference question, get a quantity; take away that measuring device, the entity being measured disappears … or, rather, is overwhelmed by “noise”, the myriad of other, more pressing realities.

  • I’m a bit biased, since I’m an Edwards guy who doesn’t like Clinton at all. Still, I’ve thought for a year now that this is a race where the polls at this point don’t mean anything. I am of the opinion that this race is going to become, very quickly once the primaries start, Clinton and one non-Clinton candidate. My suspicion is that most of the people who support someone other than Clinton right now aren’t going to switch to her as the field narrows.

    If I am right about that, the way to look at the polls is to compare Clinton’s numbers to the field as a whole. Clearly, it can’t be just adding the rest of them together, since some of those voters will move to Clinton. Regardless, my scenario means that the race is no better than close, with a real possibility that Clinton is behind the still unnamed non-Clinton.

  • Hit Post too soon.

    The other implication of my hypothesis is that, right now, Obama and Edwards aren’t competing against Clinton. They are competing against each other. The first hurdle they have to overcome is to be the UnClinton. Right now, they should only be attacking Clinton to the extent that the rest of the party base doesn’t like her, and only so long as it makes each look better than the other.

  • I hate myself when I take these polls seriously, but there was a poll last week that indicated male non-affiliated voters did not like Clinton, and there was a bit a news that NH non-affiliated voters are requesting Democratic ballots in droves. I am a non-affiliated female voter who will not vote for Clinton and I don’t see any war of the sexes among non-affiliated voters. So, if you put all these things together in a big pot and stir them around, I don’t think the resulting dish bodes well for Clinton in New Hampshire.

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