| There are lots of great posts concerning state polling for the upcoming General Election such as Chris' just begun Presidential Forecast. A topic I have been thinking about is how much better Clinton seems to do against McCain than Obama in some state polls. A recent example is the NC SUSA poll, and people like Jerome at MyDD like to cite such polls as evidence that the Dems are picking the wrong (weaker) candidate. Jerome's point is largely irrelevant - Obama is the nominee and whining that your candidate would be doing better in General Election polls only serves to weaken the Dem cause. But the NC SUSA poll raises some other interesting questions.
The first question that comes to mind, which is about as irrelevant as Jerome's whining: Does anyone think Clinton would be polling so well in places like NC if she were the nominee? Looking at the internals of the NC SUSA poll, it is clear that women are the primary difference. They support Clinton 56-37 over McCain, yet they support McCain 47-46 over Obama. That is a 20-point swing towards McCain. From my perspective, as an Obama supporter, this seems like sour grapes. The differences between Obama and Clinton are minor compared to the difference between either Dem and McCain and I cannot for the life of me explain why some one who supports Clinton would vote for McCain against Obama. Thus, I believe that if these women truly bought into Clinton's message, then they will also buy into Obama's message. Back to the question: would Clinton would be polling so well in places like NC if she were the nominee, or do people think there would be Obama supporters telling pollsters that they will vote McCain rather than Clinton. The most talked about constituency of Obama's base is African Americans and they break 89-7 Obama/McCain and 74-9 Clinton/McCain in SUSA's NC poll. While this does represent a 17-point difference in favor of Obama in a match up with McCain, I wouldn't call it a swing to McCain like the female vote. For the women, there is 7% other/undecided in both Obama/McCain and Clinton/McCain matchups. Ten percent of NC women are truly telling SUSA that they would vote for Clinton in a Clinton/McCain contest, but they would vote for McCain in a Obama/McCain contest (note there is a statistically insignificant 1-point difference for men: 41% for Clinton and 40% for Obama). For African Americans there is 4% other/undecided in the Obama/McCain match-up, but 17% other/undecided in the Clinton/McCain match-up. The subgroup of African Americans who support Obama, but not Clinton, largely fall into the other/undecided category. If Clinton were the nominee I am sure these African Americans would support her. However, if she were the current presumptive nominee, after all of the racist rhetoric that has come out of her camp, do people think African Americans would still be telling pollsters that they wouldn't vote for McCain, or would we see something like a 15-20 point support for McCain among African Americans? I think it would be the latter and thus Clinton's impressive 8-point lead over McCain in NC would shrink substantially.
While thinking about the first question, a second, and I think much more relevant question came to mind: Who are the 10% of women who are telling SUSA that they would vote for Clinton over McCain but McCain over Obama? This is a question that could be looked at from two ends of the political spectrum. We could view these women as conservatives who generally vote Republican in federal elections, and they simply refuse to vote for a black man for President. On the other end of the spectrum we could view these women as Clinton's most diehard supporters, currently very depressed and frustrated at losing a close contest, believing that the Obama campaign has belittled Clinton, possibly believing the Obama campaign has been sexist, and as a result of all of this telling SUSA they will vote McCain over Obama. The optimist in me believes the latter. Since, as I said earlier, the differences between Obama and Clinton are minor compared to the difference between either Dem and McCain, to believe the former is to believe that 10% of NC women are racists (while apparently none of the NC men are), and I cannot be persuaded to believe that. Thus, I believe that a large portion of these women who are currently telling SUSA they will vote for Clinton over McCain but McCain over Obama will ultimately vote for Obama. It will be interesting to see if future polls show this to be true. |
