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A bit more from that CNN / OCR poll (PDF) in the form of these presidential head-to-head matchups. As you can see, all the non-McCain Republicans are getting trounced by either Democrat, though more soundly trounced by Obama. On the flipside, Hillary Clinton's narrow lead over McCain is a bit bigger than Barack Obama's super-duper-narrow lead over the King of Straight Talk. Comments (25)
Excellent Matt Excellent, Just go on basing your decision on who should be the nominee of your party on meaningless polls regarding an election that is more than 10 months out. Because we all know how good polls are, don't we? lol 
Are these popular vote polls or electoral college counts based on polls in each state?
The strength of Obama over everyone other than McCain indicates that independents are sour on all the republican candidates except him. When it comes to McCain versus Hillary and Obama, it's back to the evenly split republican/democratic elections we saw in 2000 and 2004.
Does Hillary's slim lead over McCain in this sampling take into account what will happen if disaffected dems are forced to abandon the party if she is the nominee? I am a democrat and I don't like McCain's support for the Iraq war, but in contrast to Hillary Clinton, at least I know he is honest and consistent about it. BTW, the racist stuff coming out of the Clinton camp is the line-in-the-sand that I can't cross. I'll just stay home or vote for McCain if it comes to it.
~1300 americans or voters? I saw no sense of likely voter behaviour, i.e. no self-identification of party affiliation, gender, age, ethnicity, and prior voting experience. A BS poll, particularly since Edwards beats everyone republican head to head more than either obama or clinton, puleeeese!
These polls are even less trustworthy than the state-to-state primary polls. I don't believe for a second that Edwards gets 10-15% more of the vote than Hillary. The pre-primary polls in NH and Iowa were dead-wrong until 2-4 weeks before elections. Hillary should have stomped Obama by 10-20%. She didn't. She was supposedly ahead by even larger margins in NV, although now, she's supposedly conceding the state or in a tight race. General election polls will be meaningless until the nominees are chosen. At that point, all these numbers will change.
On the flipside, Hillary Clinton's narrow lead over McCain is a bit bigger than Barack Obama's super-duper-narrow lead over the King of Straight Talk. "A bit bigger" is 1%. The poll results were: 49% Obama 50% Clinton There is essentially no difference in those results. The difference in results between Obama and Clinton for the other likely candidates (I'm excluding Giuliani) is significant, but really at this point none of this has much bearing on what the actual election results will be.
Okay, now you swapped out your poll charts. Are you citing 1 poll or 2 and what happened to the Edwards numbers?
Regarding the matchups vs. McCain, I would only add that if you look at the *averaged* polls at RCP.com, Obama's typical 5 point advantage relative to Clinton shows up vs. McCain as well.
Interesting snapshot. But, of course, it's a snapshot taken before the GOP attack ads crank up. Obama is still a relative unknown. I would think his margins are much softer than Hillary's. She's been in the public eye longer and people's opinions of her are more solidified.
Yet more reason for the wise Democrat to take Kos's advice and vote Mitt in Michigan. If he leads the ticket, the Democratic candidate hardly matters: the party gets a Eisenhower-sized landslide and a governing majority until 2014 at earliest.
Look, this is just plain silly... I don't much like Hillary myself, but we all have to admit she's been bombarded with something like $100M of negative ads over the years, plus a huge multiple of that in anti-Clinton conservative media attacks for about 20 years now. As far as I can tell, no one's ever run a *single* attack ad against Obama in his entire career... Frankly, given that discrepancy, I'm pretty astonished that his numbers---and the relative gap---aren't enormously much greater.
Ughh, sorry, Matt. But Edwards polls by far the best. Or is he out of the picture?
I can't believe CNN just expunged Edwards from this poll. But they kept in 4 repugs.
It appears CNN did not see fit to include all the candidates when the commissioned the poll.
I guess the fact that both WIN isn't good enough--it has to be how big the win will be that matters. McCain will be the toughest opponent against whomever the Dem nominee is. This idea that Hillary will "unite" the GOP is just BS--just as people who post, "I'm a Dem and I won't vote for Clinton" is crap.
Jenn, I'm a dem and I won't vote for Clinton - you can take that to the bank. Coming into this election, I was never a Clinton supporter, but I was looking forward to voting for our eventual nominee whoever that was. All of that has gone out the window after the last several days. The campaign that has been run since she lost IA would make Karl Rove blush.
Jeff, Edwards wasn't polled this time. Last time CNN included him, and he crushed the opposition, beating McCain by 8, Giuliani by 9, Romney by 22, and Huck by 25. Nobody else ran up numbers like that.
Jenn: Wrong. I'm a Democrat and I'll never vote for Hillary. Voting gender is bullshit. Grow up.
It is time to do a poll among the political chatterers - does the absurd concentration on polls strip content from elections, intentionally buffering the center-right consensus D.C. from meaningful challenge? Just because I'd like to know how intentional the manipulation is. Or whether it is just ignorance.
All the negatives are out there for Clinton; they are baked into these numbers. Not so for McCain and Barack. We can really go negative on McCain, whose foreign policy views are primitive, and who confesses to not having a clue about economics.
"Jenn: Wrong. I'm a Democrat and I'll never vote for Hillary. Voting gender is bullshit. Grow up. Posted by Bobby" Wow, Voting gender is bullshit. Voting party is evidently also bullshit. Even though you call yourself a Democrat. Why are you registered Democrat then?
Bobby, I agree that voting gender is bullshit, but it's not like men are immune from that either. I will vote for whatever nominee is selected but after the last week with the Clinton surrogates being idiotic and the Obama campaign actually pushing distortions of the Clintons' statements, I don't care for either. Listen, if we're going to hold Clinton herself responsible for every supporter, then we should, at least, hold Obama responsible for his damn staff. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/12/obama-camps-memo-on-clin_n_81205.html Edwards was the only one I felt proud to support. I hate that his candidacy was purposely ignored by the corporate press. He's by far the best candidate. Now I have to decide between two corporate "Democrats" whose foreign policy is hawkish. Perfect!
People are still arguing that Clinton has been "vetted". Well, no, she's SURVIVED previous attack ads that were run years ago - when she was a First lady and then as a new Senator. The SAME attack ads will be pulled out for this run, and they will be run against new voters who don't remember the old ones. In addition, NEW attack ads will be generated based on words and deeds of the last few years. So the "vetting" effect will be somewhat negated. Meanwhile, nobody has found any serious anti-Obama concepts yet - so maybe there aren't any other than his "built-in" ones of being black and relatively young. Choosing a candidate based on how much crap has been dug up on them so far is pretty stupid, in my view.
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Heads in the Sand
Excellent Matt Excellent,
Just go on basing your decision on who should be the nominee of your party on meaningless polls regarding an election that is more than 10 months out. Because we all know how good polls are, don't we? lol
Posted by Chicounsel | January 14, 2008 2:32 PM