Nomination At A Glance, September 11th Update

by: Chris Bowers

Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 23:06


The presidential campaign has been really quiet lately, at least when it comes to news I find interesting. However, I expect that will change for good in about three weeks when we have the final pre-primary fundraising numbers, the finalized primary calendar, and when the Iraq debate in Congress quiets down. In the meantime, the Los Angles Times provides us with some amusement with new polls from Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina:

LA-Times / Bloomberg, 9/6-9/9, no trendlines
Candidate IA NH SC
Clinton 28% 35% 45%
Edwards 23% 16% 7%
Obama 19% 16% 27%
Richardson 10% 8% 1%
Biden 2% 3% 3%
Kucinich 2% 3% 1%
Dodd 1% -- 1%
Other -- 2% 2%
Unsure 15% 17% 13%

At MyDD, Jonathan Singer notes that the voter screen used is pretty wide:

I do just want to add that the "likely" voter screen for the LA Times and Bloomberg is a bit loose. Doing some back of the napkin math, the likely voter model used here would include more than 870,000 Democratic caucus participants -- which is a bit more than the 122,000 or so that participated in the last Democratic caucus. While there may be more excitement this time around than there was in 2004, there isn't that much more excitement. So what does that mean? A lot of the folks the Times and Bloomberg are deeming "likely" voters or caucus goers are in fact unlikely to participate come January. Most in fact. As such, while these numbers might be good gauges of the general sentiments of these states, I'm not certain how good of gauges they are of the sentiments of those who are actually going to play a large role in selecting the next Democratic nominee.

There are Republican numbers too, and even though they are the first officially post-Thompson polls of early states, I am not going to bother cluttering up the front page by dedicating an entire table to them. Needless to say, Thompson is still getting crushed in Iowa and New Hampshire, but still runs strong in South Carolina.

Given all of these new polls, here is an update to the nomination at a glance tables. Considering the still fluid primary calendar, and all of the noise around Michigan and Florida going early, but everyone promising not to campaign there, I have tried to distill the numbers to the truly essential figures that will determine the nomination.

All State Polls Taken August 8th through September 9th
Democratic Nomination, At a Glance
State Est. Date # Polls Clinton Obama Edwards Richardson
Net Avail Cash Jun 30 Q2 $29.6M $33.6M $11.8M $6.9M
Iowa Dec-Jan? 5 26.2% 21.0% 23.6% 11.6%
New Hampshire Jan 08 3 35.7% 18.3% 14.7% 8.0%
National Feb 05 NA 39.2% 21.5% 10.7% 2.4%

Iowa is still close enough that Clinton, Edwards and Obama could finish in any order in the top three, even if the election were held tomorrow. Consider, for example, that in the most recent poll of Iowa, Obama narrowly led among second-place choices with 25% (Edwards had 20%, and Clinton 19%). However, Clinton’s lead is strong enough that even if she were to slip to third place in Iowa, she would still have a decent, at least 50% chance, of winning New Hampshire. Such a scenario would probably lead to a very close finish in New Hampshire, but that is still a luxury no other candidate can afford. Right now, Edwards must win Iowa, and Obama must defeat Clinton in Iowa.

Republican Nomination, At a Glance
State Est. Date # Polls Romney Giuliani Thompson McCain Hukabee
Net Avail Cash June 30 Q2 $12.1M $14.7M $2.8M $0.1M $0.4M
Iowa Dec-Jan? 5 30.8% 14.4% 13.4% 6.6% 9.8%
New Hampshire Jan 08 3 29.0% 22.0% 10.0% 11.7% 6.0%
South Carolina Jan 19 4 9.8% 22.0% 22.3% 14.0% 6.8%
National Feb 05 NA 10.9% 26.7% 18.2% 12.1% 2.7%

I have included South Carolina on the Republican side because it is currently scheduled to take place ten days earlier than the Democratic version, which I do not currently see as meaningfully separate from national polling given its late date. Over here, Romney still looks to be in control in Iowa, which means he is also quite comfortably in control in New Hampshire. The question is whether he will receive enough of a bounce from those two early states to surpass both Thompson and Giuliani in South Carolina. Should he pass both, and win South Carolina, he will cruise to the nomination. Should he pass one, and finish in second, look for a Romney vs. South Carolina winner battle on Super Tuesday. Should Romney win both early states, and then finish in third in South Carolina, I have no idea what happens.

Methodological notes can be found in the extended entry.
Chris Bowers :: Nomination At A Glance, September 11th Update
Methodological Notes
  • Nomination at a Glance archive can be found here
  • My averages are different from those at Pollster.com, because I use a simple mean while they use a trendline system. Mystery Pollster writes about that here.
  • An explanation for my projected calendar can be found here.
  • Only announced candidates with 5% or more in most polling averages are shown.
  • National polling averages taken from Pollster.com. Virtually all early state polls can also be found at Pollster.com.
  • “Net Available Cash” equals cash on hand minus debts minus amount raised for general election. More information can be found at Open Secrets. Current numbers are not precise, as all data is not yet available.
  • For Democrats, early state polls that only include Clinton, Edwards and Obama in the questions were not included.
  • For Democrats, early state polls that include Gore in the question were only included when Gore-less results were unavailable.
  • February 5th is not actually a national primary, but due to the large number of states holding nomination events on that date, national polls are used as a placeholder.

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Nomination At A Glance, September 11th Update | 8 comments
Will the race *ever* start? (0.00 / 0)
The presidential campaign has been really quiet lately, at least when it comes to news I find interesting. However, I expect that will change for good in about three weeks when we have the final pre-primary fundraising numbers, the finalized primary calendar, and when the Iraq debate in Congress quiets down.

I guess that's plausible, but it seems like we've been waiting for the primary race to start all year and it never does. Previous points at which one would expect things to kick off, like the beginning of primaries, have barely made a ripple. The only real change in the Democratic race at all it seems like over the course of the entire year has been Hillary Clinton's numbers gradually slipping upward. And the more solid Clinton's numbers get, the quieter and quieter that any signs of progressive activist involvement in the race seem to get...

Maybe I'm just overly pessimistic, but what if the landmarks you mention pass and things just stay quiet? What if rather than giving way to primary coverage, the Iraq debate (or the backlash from the base if this Iraq debate goes anywhere near as badly as the one in May did) eclipses the primary coverage? What's to stop the eerie silence from persisting right up until the primaries come, and the Democratic party, exhausted from tireless low-grade campaigning but not really particularly affected by it, goes out to vote and nominates Hillary Clinton by default?

default? (0.00 / 0)
Just because Chris is getting bored with Clinton's dominance of the race doesn't mean that the campaigns aren't all putting everything into winning. There is no 'default' here, Democrats are engaged and more interested than ever. Now, Chris may  skip polls entirely as Clinton 'slips' further up in IA and NH or start talking about how everyone in those early states changes their minds in the last week of the campaign, but progressive activists and the campaigns will all continue fighting for support, with Clinton apparently fighting the hardest.
[ Parent ]
I'll never skip primary polls (0.00 / 0)
But yes, I am growing bored with a campaign where the leader pulls further ahead. That wouldn't bother me in a general election, but in a primary where I lean more toward Clitnon's major challengers than I lean toward Clinton, it does feel boring. I always like close, unpredictable campaigns anyway, simply as a matter of preference.
[ Parent ]
Information informing momentum (0.00 / 0)
Clinton's leaded seems to be predicated on a lack of information. Many of those polled are hearing her campaign rhetoric on the war and are not aware of her more hawkish lineage in Iraq.  Few seem to be aware that she is taking huge sums from corporations.  Especially damaging is the money from Murdoch.  Her opponents are rightfully worried about driving these points home.  Yet the left seems to be waiting for one of these rather centrists mainstream candidates to inform mainstream voters.  Time is Teflon.  The longer she goes unchallenged on these issues the stronger she will be against them.

There are at least three possible approaches to avoiding the Clinton mistake.  We could wait for one of the mainstream candidates to make the argument strongly enough to convince people that they need to pay attention.  We could try to convince the second tier candidates to do this, assuming that if they all start singing the problems of Hillary the press will eventually have to start paying attention.  Plus they can be much more pointed in their attacks.

But really why wait for a flawed electoral process and flawed corporate press much of which is funding Hillary.  The "anybody but Hillary" numbers are huge.  Why not raise money to run information ads in Iowa and New Hampshire?  The effort alone would gather a certain amount of attention.  Another candidate attacking Hillary is not going to draw much attention.  A united force of democrats raising money to get the word out about her is going to get attention.

High ABC numbers (0.00 / 0)
Unfortunately the ABC voters are mainly Republicans as shown by high favorability rating of HRC with Democrats.
[ Parent ]
I would have thought (0.00 / 0)
that they would only be polling Democrats about Democrats before the primary.  So Rasmussen's 49% unfavorably rating includes Republicans? 

Even so, it is understood that many of those Republicans will have to cross over. Such ads could be very pro-Democrat, increasing the interest of swing voters to vote for a party of values.  I wonder how much it would take to run an ad campaign in Iowa.  I suspect that the money could easily be raised and would have more impact than anything else. 

[ Parent ]
Hillary Clintons favorables are mid-80s to 90s among Dems (0.00 / 0)
Yeah, she has the highest favorables of the candidates among Democrats, almost as high as Bill Clinton's, according to Rasmssen:

Within the political party, Clinton is also the most well-liked of the party's potential nominees and routinely earns favorable ratings from eight-out-of-ten Democratic voters. Obama and Edwards do well in these ratings, but not as well as Clinton.

A recent Pew poll shows similar numbers with some crosstabs.

There are very few "anybody but Hillary" Democrats, and not many Republicans will cross over for any Democratic nominee, you want to look at moderate and Dem-leaning independents. From the Pew poll the only opportunity for anti-Hillary is among conservatives.

[ Parent ]
off topic: your IA and NH momentum study (0.00 / 0)
what are the chances you'd be interested in running your early primary bounce analysis for the GOP side of the race to see who's really winning right now?

or have you already?

i'm very curious where romney would stand.

Nomination At A Glance, September 11th Update | 8 comments
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