Concerning Hillary Clinton's Coattails

by: Chris Bowers

Mon Aug 13, 2007 at 20:15:00 PM EDT

In more than 40 interviews, Democratic candidates, consultants and party chairs from every region pointed to internal polls that give Clinton strikingly high unfavorable ratings in places with key congressional and state races.(…)

The problem is her political baggage: A whopping 49 percent of the public says they have an unfavorable view of Clinton compared to 47 percent who say they hold her in high regard, according to a Gallup Poll survey Aug. 3-5.

Her negative ratings are higher than those of her husband, former President Clinton, former President George H.W. Bush and 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry at the end of their campaigns.

A candidate's unfavorability scores almost always climb during campaigns. If the pattern holds, Clinton has a historically high hurdle to overcome.

Anecdotally speaking, this is indeed a question I have heard discussed often in political circles, both online and off. It seems to be a general worry that many Democrats and progressives who are not supporting Hillary Clinton in the primaries have about her. However, looking over some numbers, I wonder if the importance of favorable / unfavorable polls are overstated when discussing a candidate's coattails. Since the Gallup poll was quoted in the AP article, consider these favorable numbers recorded by Gallup on July 12-15:

Hillary Clinton: 47% favorable, 48% unfavorable
Rudy Giuliani: 52% favorable, 32% unfavorable
Barack Obama: 49% favorable, 26% unfavorable

Now, given these favorable ratings, one would think that there would be a large gap between Clinton and Obama's performance against Giuliani in the same poll, right? However, that is not what the numbers show:

Gallup Poll. July 12-15, 2007. N=908 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 4.
Giuliani 49%--46% Clinton
Giuliani 49%--45% Obama

In showing Giuliani ahead of both Clinton and Obama, this poll is definitely anomalous. However, what I think it also shows is that the impact of favorable / unfavorable ratings on general election trial heats is not exactly obvious. Obama has a higher favorable rating than Clinton, and a much better favorable / unfavorable ratio. However, this does not translate into a superior general election performance against Giuliani. Further, even though Giuliani crushes Clinton in the favorable poll by a net 21 points, his lead in the general election trial heat is an extremely narrow three points. In this poll, there does not seem to be a clear relationship between favorable numbers and trial heat numbers.

I point this out to suggest that Clinton's "coattail problem" is overstated by many. Also, considering how much it is talked about, someone should try and provide an estimate of how large this problem would actually be. Right now, the best available means of determining this comes from general election trial heat averages. So, looking at a broad range of polls of this sort, it appears that Obama performs 2.2% better than Clinton against Giuliani according to Real Clear Politics, and 3.1% better than Clinton according to Pollster.com. When matched up against John McCain, the other nearly 100% name ID Republican candidate, Obama performs 3.5% better according to RCP, and 4.8% better according to Pollster.com. Right now, this suggests an average Clinton coattail problem of, at most, about 3.0 or 3.5%. Further, it should be pointed out that this margin could very well decrease as time goes on, or even be eliminated entirely. For example, immediately after the Iowa caucuses, John Kerry polled better than Hillary Clinton in general election matchups against Republicans. However, after the swift-boating campaign of 2004, Hillary Clinton began to poll better against Republicans than did John Kerry. So, while Clinton does worse than Obama against Republicans now, that does not necessarily mean she will do worse than Obama in the actual election. Polls like these can, and will, change.