"Just what the hell do you mean people don't like me!"
Posted on 07/02/2007 1:30:14 PM PDT by dangus
Hillary Clinton's disapproval ratings (42%) are 50% higher than any other candidate. (The next highest are John Edwards and John McCain, each at 28%). 52% would not vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstance.
That a majority would never vote for her does NOT mean she'd lose any contest. Half of Americans don't vote. Other surveys have found, for instance, that Fred Thompson would only tie her, at 42%. That means that 16% of the electorate might vote for Thompson. Or they could stay home. Or Thompson could even lose by a ratio of 48-42, with 10% of "likely voters" not actually voting. What it does mean (and it's good for Thompson) is that most of the 16% of the "undecideds" are at least open to voting for Thompson at this moment, while at most only a little over a third of them (6% of the total) are open to voting for Clinton. And even that number is reduced by the percentage of voters who like Clinton, but like Thompson more.
Rudy Giuliani captures the largest percentage of voters that COULD vote for him, 64%. But he wouldn't necessarily do better than Thompson. For all we know, many of the people who said they COULD vote for Giuliani are the same people who COULD vote for Hillary. And if those who could vote for either Clinton or Giuliani are more likely to vote for Hillary, the fact that they could have voted for Giuliani won't matter.
The same could be said about any other candidates, but there are two reasons that potential Giuliani admirers could be more likely to vote for Hillary than Thompson admirers, for instance. First, since Giuliani has more issues in common with Hillary, so it stands to reason he might have more potential voters in common. But we can't know determine that from the polls. However, we can determine that Giuliani is also only tied with Hillary in the polls is meaningful. And 40% of voters have no strong opinion about Giuliani, but 63% of voters don't have an opinion of Thompson. Therefore, Thompson has the opportunity to win over far more voters than Giuliani. On the other hand, more voters could have their impressions of Thompson more easily affected by negative news stories.
And, of course, the percentages of Americans who would not vote for Clinton, even if accurate, are not necessarily predictive. They could include sizeable numbers of Democrats who dislike Clinton, and are hoping that their answers in the survey will dissuade Democrats from nominating her, but who at the same time might hold their nose and vote for her.
Favorable/Unfavorable Ratings:
Giuliani: 43/17 (+26);
Obama: 36 /21 (+15);
Fred Thompson: 25/12 (+13);
McCain: 33/28 (+5);
Edwards: 32/28 (+4);
Romney: 24/20 (+4);
Richardson: 19/15 (+4);
Huckabee: 16 /12 (+4);
Bloomberg: 20/18 (+2);
Biden: 21/20 (+1);
Clinton: 39/42 (-3)
Would/Would Not ever vote for candidate:
Giuliani 64/36 (+28)
Fred Thompson 62/38 (+24)
Bloomberg 61/39 (+22)
Obama 60/40 (+20)
Edwards 59/41 (+18)
McCain 58/42 (+16)
Biden 57/43 (+14)
Richardson 57/43 (+14)
Huckabee 56/44 (+12)
Romney 54/46 (+8)
Clinton 48/52 (-4)
Mitt Romney's results from this poll also seem worth mentioning. While only 20% of voters find Romney unfavorable, 48% would never vote for him. What does it mean that the public would say of a candidate, "I don't dislike him, but I'd never vote for him"? Other candidates have percentages of people who would never vote for them which are significantly higher than their unfavorability ratings, but Romney's are much higher than candidates with similarity favorable/unfavorable ratings (Richardson, Huckabee, Biden, Bloomberg, etc.) The portion of voters who would never vote for him is almost too high to be explained merely by partisanship: Only 36% of voters would never vote for a Republican (specifically, Giuliani); at most 20% dislike Romney, and it's hard to imagine that these two statistics are terribly independent.
Lastly, Barrack Hussein Obama may not have the room for improvement that his approval:disapproval rating suggests. Unlike Thompson, the vast majority of voters have heard of him, but they simply lack a strong opinion of him, either way. Since the press coverage of him has been nearly universally positive, one might regard his "undecideds" as "unimpressed."
Bloomberg’s approval rating is 20%, Biden’s is 21%. How is that a “trash poll”?
Romney is unelectable.
He's a slick elitist who's out for his own ambition, and the more his ridiculous track record of opportunistic Kerryesque flip-floppery and pandering is publicized the more that huge bloc of anti-Romney voters will be solidified.
Interesting
"Just what the hell do you mean people don't like me!"
Sorry, you're flattering him (and yourself).
The media doesn't care about him because the vast majority of rock-ribbed Republicans (like me for example) don't either. He may be a wonderful person with great ideas, but politics ain't philosophy.
We need winners, not pure-hearted ideologues. Hate to break it to you like that, but that's just the way it is.
“How is that a “trash poll”?”
My Wife got suckered into taking one of these polls on the phone. Wishy washy, are you *strongly* in favor......if it came down to this candidate vs.........suppose this and that.......for 15 FN minutes.
Like I said.
>> how many monkeys it takes to peel 500 bananas on any given Tuesday given a constant environmental temperature of 25 Celsius? Do I have that right? <<
No, I’m pretty sure there’s something to do with a Moose, Cheese or Spork Weasels. You owe the oracle a Rove-a-Matic 2008.
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