She really is a polarising figure, which is why I give her no hope in a general election.
A recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey featuring a match-up between Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul highlights one of the perils that comes from overanalyzing poll results between candidates with different levels of name recognition.That last line is a cracker. The 9/11 nutjob, anti-war, isolationist loons that spam every Internet poll in which Paul is a candidate must have to take an even bigger dose of Prozac each night than normal in order to cope with the stress of reality.
In that survey, Clinton held a fairly modest 48% to 38% lead. But, a careful look at the results tells us a lot about the public’s opinion of Hillary Clinton and virtually nothing about their opinion of Ron Paul.
Why? First, because just about everyone in the United States has an opinion of Hillary Clinton. She has been a major player on the national and international stage for 15 years. Half the country has a favorable opinion of her and half holds the opposite view, but all have an opinion. Our most recent survey results show that nearly 60% of voters have a strongly held opinion about the New York Senator and former First Lady.
As for Ron Paul, 42% don’t know enough about him to have an opinion one way or the other. He’s one of 435 Congressman whose life is way below the radar screen for most Americans. Still, his presence in the GOP Presidential Debates has raised his profile a bit--26% now offer a favorable opinion and 32% say the opposite. But, only 16% have a strongly held opinion about Paul (7% Very Favorable, 9% Very Unfavorable).
A look at the crosstabs demonstrates that it is attitudes towards Clinton that are driving the numbers in this polling match-up. Among all voters, Clinton attracts 48% support. Among the voters who have never heard of Ron Paul or don’t know enough to have an opinion, guess what. Clinton attracts the exact same total--48% of the vote. So whether or not people have heard of Ron Paul as the challenger, support for Clinton doesn’t change.
Among the 51% who have heard of Ron Paul but don’t have a Very Favorable opinion of him, Clinton attracts 49% of the vote.
The only noticeable difference to be found is among that very small slice of the electorate that has a Very Favorable opinion of Paul. Seven percent (7%) of the nation’s voters fit this description and they prefer the Texas Congressman over the Democratic frontrunner by a 70% to 27% margin.
So, outside of a small group of avid Ron Paul fans, support for Senator Clinton is unchanged whether or not the survey respondent has ever heard of Ron Paul.
Looking at other recent match-ups confirms the sense that what we’re seeing is primarily a reflection of attitudes about the Democratic frontrunner. In the latest Rasmussen Reports polling, Clinton gets 47% against Fred Thompson, 48% against Mitt Romney, 48% against Mike Huckabee, 44% against Rudy Giuliani, and 44% against John McCain.
If you average the last three polls for Senator Clinton against each of these top five Republican hopefuls, Clinton’s support averages out at 48%. Using this three-poll average, Clinton attracts between 46% and 49% support no matter which Republican candidate is named in the survey.
A separate survey shows that nearly half the nation’s voters will definitely vote against Hillary Clinton if she is on the ballot in 2008. But, five of the top seven candidates for the White House also have more than 40% of the nation committed to voting against them at this time.
Clinton is the clear and dominant frontrunner in the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. There is no clear frontrunner for the GOP nomination. Ron Paul has yet to top the 4% level of support in the daily Presidential Tracking Poll.
4 comments:
Hillary is a socialist/communist GWB shill and Hack. We have already said "NO' to this commie pundit. Ron Paul is the candidate of the american people and all we can say is...Get used to it.
Well, I'm not an "9/11 nutjob" or an "isolationist" and neither is Ron Paul, but the thought of Hillary Clinton getting the Presidency certainly is enough to qualify for prozac.
I'm looking at the rest of the Republican Field outside of Ron Paul and there is really nothing to get exicted about, but I guess I'll have to support whichever idiot the Republicans nominate just to prevent Hillary from winning, although I will not like it.
I think that its rather unfortunate that so many are so quick to simply dismiss Ron Paul as a 9/11 truther, or an anti-semite racist or some other form of lunatic rather than take an honest objective look at his platform and then read the Constitution of the United States, and ask themselves honestly if Ron Paul is actually making sense. It seems to me that all of the seeds of discord are sown in this nation by trying to get the entire nation to conform to a unified standard rather than allowing us to each be ourselves. We are after all a large Nation with one of the most diverse populations on Earth, the European Union does not try to dictate to European Countries the same way that our federal Government tries to dictate to our States.
The limitations of the Federal Govt. are clearly spelled out in Art. 1 sec. 8 USC, and limited by the 10th Amendment. While the trend lately has been to largely ignore the constitution in preferance to the mob rule that we understand as a democracy, it is a sad course of fate because only through a limited government can the individual be free, but throwing away our founding principles many people are losing their liberties but are too daft to understand why.
Finally an honest politician comes around whose sole goal is to return to the rule of law spelled out in the Constitution, and people from the other side of the world crawl out to call him a mad man. Its kinda suprizing considering he is the only guy that is not pandering himself to a given demographic and speaking entirely from principle.
The Republican Party used to bill themselves as the Party of Principles, the Party of Limited Government and the Party of Federalism, but after we give these jokers the Presidency, and both Houses of Congress they go off on a spending spree, and start optional wars with unrealistic goals, that ended up costing more than 10 times as much as they were billed.
What Ron Paul is selling is the Campaign Platform that I have wanted to hear since the Berlin Wall came down. We no longer have a need to keep troops all over the World. We do not need to provide for the defense of Europe, Japan, and Korea anymore. We can finally stop pissing away money and return to sound monetary system, free trade and free market capitalism, but we have been trending in the exact opposite direction and more towards a centrally planned economy and authoritarian state exactly like the Soviets that we were trying to liberate in the last century.
Yes indeed, if Ron Paul is a loony, then the World has truly gone mad and I fear what it will take to create a sobriety check.
hahajohnnyb,
Thanks for a reasonable comment.
Note that I didn't say Paul himself was a 9/11 nutjob but that he seems to have attracted the attention of all sorts of loons, mainly because he's a bit loony himself.
I think that Ron Paul supporters are projecting on him qualities that he doesn't possess because they're frustrated with other candidates.
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