We knew it was coming. Hillary & Co. are hyping her prospects as a presidential candidate, facts be damned. Here's what she says in the announcement on her website:
I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine. After nearly $70 million spent against my campaigns in New York and two landslide wins, I can say I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate, and how to beat them.
But Clinton's wins aren't that impressive. Her 2000 win -- the only one against serious opposition -- represented an average Democratic performance for New York, as I wrote:
[H]er 55%-43% win was not exactly a landslide. As the Almanac of American Politics 2002 points out, Chuck Schumer beat Al D'Amato by an almost identical margin of 55%-44% in the 1998 race for New York's other Senate seat, and Hillary was riding the coattails of Al Gore, who won the state 60%-35%. According to Barone and company, when you break it down by region, she won New York City 74%-25%, lost in the suburbs 53%-45%, and lost upstate 51%-47%. The latter two numbers are pretty good, but again, compare her to Schumer -- he won New York City 76%-23%, lost the suburbs 51%-49% and lost upstate 53%-45%. The figures are almost identical.
The obvious conclusion is that Hillary did about as well as your average Democrat in a Democrat-leaning state. While things could have gone much worse given how polarizing she was, it proves almost nothing about her ability to win over voters in the the battleground states of the industrial Midwest, let alone the South.
And while it's true Clinton blew out John Spencer, her opponent in 2006, he was a pathetically weak candidate who she outspent more than seven to one.
Mark Penn, Hillary's pollster, has posted an article on her site seeking to allay concerns about her electability:
She has national ratings that are higher than the winning presidential candidates of the last two decades had on Election Day and beats or statistically ties the leading Republican presidential candidates in most recent polls. A December Newsweek poll even had her beating Sen. John McCain by 7 points.
The people who have come to know Hillary the best love her the most. Hillary won a huge victory in New York, with 64 percent of the vote, after getting 83 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. In addition to her strong base in the city, she won over the highly Republican areas in upstate NY, where she has been strong since 2000, and went up 17 points this election in the Republican-leaning NYC suburbs. New Yorkers reaffirmed their support of her in her reelection, and she won 37 of the counties won by George Bush in the last election.
...Even before announcing her presidential campaign, Hillary has already proved wrong all the pundits who say that people already know her and that voters won't change their minds. In the last year, the percentage of people who have a favorable impression of Hillary Clinton in the CBS poll rose 34 percent (from 32 to 43, the highest of any Democratic contender). In the December Washington Post poll, she now has the highest favorable rating of any known Democrat (56 percent), and these were her best ratings since 1999. Hardcore Republicans don't like Hillary for the simple reason that they know she can win, and if she does, she will change the policies of their hero, George W. Bush. She has a strong appeal among both Democrats and independents, the two groups it takes to win.
But these are the same bogus arguments I shot down last July. For instance, Penn's right that Clinton's favorables in the CBS poll (PDF) are up from 32 to 43, but the same poll puts her unfavorables at 38 percent. Penn's statement that "these were her best ratings since 1999" is apparently misleading -- the Pollingreport.com summary suggests CBS didn't ask a favorability question about Hillary between 1999 and 2006. And his statement that Hillary "has a strong appeal among both Democrats and independents" neglects her 41 favorable, 33 unfavorable numbers from the CBS poll he cites.
Neil the Ethical Werewolf (?) has more on Penn cherry-picking his polls:
The only head-to-head Hillary-versus-a-Republican polls that Penn includes come from this Newsweek story, which has Hillary beating McCain by 7 and Giuliani by 1. It allows Penn to say, "Hillary Clinton is the only Democrat who beats John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in the latest Newsweek poll." That's not as exciting as it seems, because that Newsweek poll included only one other Democrat -- Barack Obama. And depending on what time of day Penn released his memo, it might not even be true. Just today, Newsweek came out with another poll showing Hillary leading McCain 48-47 and trailing Giuliani by the same score. But there is one Democrat who beats both McCain and Giuliani -- John Edwards, who leads McCain 48-43 and leads Giuliani 48-45. This is consistent with past polling data -- when you do a collection of head-to-head polls, Edwards usually outperforms everyone else against Republicans.
Penn trumpets Hillary's high favorability ratings while ignoring her equally high unfavorables from the same polls. He cites a CBS News poll with Hillary's favorables at 43%, which he notes as higher than any other Democratic contender. Of course, the same poll puts her unfavorables at 38%. John Edwards, by comparison, has a favorability number of 34% and an unfavorability of 21%. You get the same with the WaPo poll of Democrats Penn cites -- it shows Hillary with a higher unfavorability number (18) than Obama (5!) or Edwards (11) as well.
It's one thing to cherry-pick your favorite polls, or to pass off name-recognition advantages as indicative of some broader strength. But what really gets me about this Penn memo is that his citations of individual polls are themselves misleading.
Update 1/22 6:20 AM: The University of Wisconsin's Charles Franklin has compiled Hillary's favorable/unfavorable numbers going back to the early 1990s (adjusted for "house effects" from individual polls):
The bottom line is that there may have been a slight upturn in her favorable numbers in the last few months, but she remains a highly polarizing figure with unfavorables consistently over 40 percent. And remember, it's much easier to move people from favorable to unfavorable than the converse.
PS Has there ever been a first-time presidential candidate who was so polarizing so early in the race? I'm struggling for comparisons.
Update 1/22 9:31 AM: Penn's memo, which says it was updated, also includes this passage suggesting she is a "fully tested" candidate and her opponents are not:
Some of the commentators look at the ratings of people who have not yet been in the crossfire, and say they might have a better chance. Recent history shows the opposite. The last two Democratic presidential candidates started out with high favorable ratings and ended up on Election Day (and today) far more polarizing and disliked nationally (see the CBS poll below). Hillary is the one potential nominee who has been fully tested, with the Republicans spending nearly $70 million in the last decade to try to defeat her. She is not just strong, but the strongest Democrat in the field. Hillary is the only one able to match or beat the Republicans after years of their partisan attacks on her.
While Al Gore and John Kerry did end up "far more polarizing and disliked nationally," as Penn notes, it doesn't follow that Democrats should nominate someone who is already deeply polarizing. Gore and Kerry started out with better numbers than Hillary would, so why wouldn't we expect her to end up being even more unpopular?
Abraham Lincoln. Unfavorables very high for a large portion of the electorate.
Posted by: Elros | January 22, 2007 at 09:31 AM
I'm quite amused when people find my name question-mark deserving.
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | January 24, 2007 at 12:16 PM