How much of Clinton’s advantage is built on name recognition? Gallup take a closer look national name recognition numbers for the presidential field and cross references the results. They find that Clinton’s lead is partially built on name recognition, but by no means entirely so:
Candidate
All Dems
Familiar with the top 3
Unfamiliar with one or more of the top 3
Clinton
48%
43%
53%
Obama
25%
30%
17%
Edwards
13%
13%
10%
And thus, once again, the Inflated Clinton Poll Theory is proven to be partially correct (it had already been proven in Iowa, and nationally among undecideds). Clinton’s lead is indeed somewhat, just not entirely, inflated by the tendency of low-information voters to break her way. Among those who know all candidates, she leads by 13% over Obama. Among those who are not familiar with the “top three” candidates, she leads by 36%. Overall, her advantage among those not paying as much attention to the campaign account for about 10% of her current 23% lead in national Gallup polls.
However, the point we all need to remember is that while polls that push undecideds, low-information voters, and unlikely primary voters are all slightly inflating Clinton’s advantage, Clinton is still in front even when one removes all of those advantages. The main reason for this is that she has a higher favorability ratio, and higher overall strongly favorable numbers, than any other Democrat running for President. The chart on the right, produced by Pew, shows this. Even among Democrats who know Obama, Edwards and Clinton enough to form an opinion of them, Clinton still boasts a higher strongly favorable opinion (38% to 30% for Obama to 23% for Edwards) and a higher overall favorable ratio (88%-12%, versus 83%-17% for both Obama and Edwards). So, even if Edwards and Obama were to entirely catch up with Clinton in name recognition, they would continue to trail Clinton in national polls because Clinton has fewer unfavorables and a higher overall strongly favorable number. And it is very, very unlikely that will change before the start of the primary and caucus season, since Clinton’s edge was built up through a long-term, sixteen relationship with the base. There is nothing Obama and Edwards can do before Iowa to counter that advantage entirely.
So, in summary:
National polls are inflating Clinton’s lead through her advantage among voters unfamiliar with the top candidates, undecided voters who are pushed to make a choice, and less likely primary voters / caucus goers both nationally and in early states like Iowa. I can prove all of that now. It isn’t just “theory” anymore.
Clinton is ahead even after these factors are accounted for, and is probably still ahead outside the margin of error. While it is impossible to know for certain how far ahead she still is, a good guess is that the above factors collectively cut her lead in half. However, that still means her advantage is at least 8% nationwide, and thus outside the margin of error for almost all national polls.
National polls don’t really matter that much, anyway. Clinton’s national advantage, which seems highly unlikely to disappear before the start of the primary season, means that she is the only candidate who can potentially survive early state losses and still have a change to win the nomination. While everyone else has to win either Iowa or New Hampshire, and Edwards probably has to win both, Clinton can still be the nominee as long as she finishes second in each state, and as long as Obama does not win Iowa.
So, this pretty much closes the book on the Inflated Clinton Poll Theory. The three points above provide the long and the short on how large Clinton’s national lead is, where that lead comes from, and what that lead means in determining the nominee. The rest is still dependent on the primary calendar, and the results in early states. Keep your eye on Iowa and the New Hampshire projection tables. As long as Clinton stays ahead of all three of Obama, Edwards and Richardson in at least one of those categories, she is still the favorite for the nomination, and thus the presidency. This is now the 92nd consecutive day she has held that position, and given the trends in Iowa, her grip on that position it appears to be strengthening.
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As I showed in my nomination at a glance update yesterday, Hillary Clinton has improved her position in Iowa, and nationally, in recent weeks. Given that all of the top candidates will have more than enough money to compete during the primary season, the only truly negative mark for her was that Obama had pulled to within four points in New Hampshire. However, now a new poll from New Hampshire shows her lead in the state to be as strong as ever:
This moves the four-poll average in New Hampshire to Clinton 34.0%, Obama 25.3%, Edwards 13.3%, Richardson 9.5%. With her national advantage currently sitting at 15.3%, I calculate that she is only four points away from being able to survive a defeat in Iowa and New Hampshire and still be the frontrunner for the nomination. In fact, with a 9.3% advantage in New Hampshire, she is only three points away there from being able to survive a second-place finish in Iowa to Obama and still win New Hampshire. Right now, I calculate she already can survive a third-place Iowa finish to Edwards and Obama in Iowa and still take New Hampshire (narrowly to be sure, but she can still do it). The only truly bad situation for her right now would be a third or fourth place finish in Iowa coupled with an Obama victory in Iowa. However, as I pointed out yesterday, Clinton has taken the lead in Iowa.
[O]ur analysis suggests at this point there is little difference at the national level in candidate preferences even when we analyze smaller groups of more hard-core voters. For our latest national poll, we narrowed the sample down to those Democrats who said they were "extremely likely" to vote in the Democratic primary in their state next year. No difference. Hillary Clinton heads by 20 points over Obama [instead of 22 points].
Clinton only drops two points relative to Obama in a tighter voter screen. Given Obama's relative strength among Democratic leaning independents, that number is probably more than erased by the states with "closed" primaries, where Democratic-leaning independents are unable to vote (such as New York and Pennsylvania). While Clinton may be doing better among less likely caucus goers in Iowa, that does not appear to be the case nationally. While voters who are actually undecided disproportionately choose Clinton when pushed, even that shows that Clinton has a significant advantage among undecided voters, that further suggests the strength of her position. In short, the Inflated Clinton Poll Theory appears to point to a negligible difference in polls, rather than a significant one.
I point all of this out to make it as clear as possible that Hillary Clinton's lead is large, continuing to grow, and not in anyway similar to the advantages enjoyed by Lieberman and Gephardt in 2004. While both of them were consistently trending downward nationally and in Iowa respectively due to high, and not very favorable, name recognition among Democrats, Hillary Clinton is instead well-liked among the base and facing two high-name ID challengers in Edwards and Obama. It also does not appear that direct attacks on Hillary Clinton are working very well, since she trended noticeably upward during the foreign policy "spat" with Obama. Rather than the 2004 campaign, a much better analogy for Hillary Clinton's advantage is the 1984 and 2000 campaigns. Both of those campaigns featured former Democratic Vice-Presidents, which is basically what Hillary Clinton is for the rank and file right now. As Joe Trippi commented in my first post along these lines back in January:
Chris -- Her numbers are more like Vice President Mondale's in 1984 or even Vice President Al Gore's before the 2000 primaries. It will be very difficult to stop Hillary Clinton from gaining the nomination -- it can be done -- but not by any candidate who wages a "paint by the numbers" campaign. Gary Hart challenged Mondale and almost defeated him -- but he did it with a bold -- "New ideas" unorthodox campaign. In the end the machinery of the Mondale candidacy (full disclosure - I worked for Mondale that cycle) was too much for the Hart insurgency. If Hillary Clinton is defeated it will be by a bold, new, insurgent campaign.
I think that is basically right. In order for Clinton to not win the nomination, it will require someone to challenge her with a campaign that stands out from history in the way it is run. I think that if that campaign currently existed, then the progressive blogosphere would have largely lined up behind it already, not unlike large sectors of it did for Howard Dean in 2004. Or, perhaps Edwards and Obama already all the equivalent of Clark and Dean in 2004, and so this process is already under way. I also do not entirely know what terms like "bold, new, insurgent campaign" or "a campaign that stands out from history" mean, as they tend to be vague. I guess that might be an "I know it when I see it," sort of thing.
But how, if or even whether Hillary Clinton should / could lose the nomination are questions for another post. For now, I think it suffices as a stand alone point to demonstrate just how strong polling currently shows her to be. She will be very difficult to beat.
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