In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Donald Trump is dead-last among all voters in net popularity and dead-first in poll after poll of just Republican voters. Meanwhile, the most popular thing in the news right now is Planned Parenthood, with a 45%-30% rating, but Planned Parenthood is what the Republicans have decided to attack.
So, as you might expect, the only thing they tested that is more unpopular than the Republican Party is their leading candidate, the loud-mouthed womanizing blowhard real estate developer from Manhattan.
And, yet, people who actually know him well enough to express an opinion, kind of like Bernie Sanders (24%-19%). That’s better than Hillary’s 37%-48% rating, and it’s a better showing than any other politician in the poll.
It’s a crazy year, folks.
“Just like me” voters focus on the the top line poll ratings in the primary and to a lesser extent, the general.
For those interested in electability, those general election horse race numbers are mushy. Less mushy are the fav/unfav ratings of the candidates. Those become less mushy as name ID increases and the campaigns proceed. With Trump’s near 100% name ID and fav/unfav so far upside down, it would take a miracle for him to win the general (iirc his base strongly believes in miracles). Clinton’s negative fav/unfav are fine if she draws Trump as her opponent. Very troubling if its not Trump.
Although Trump’s net favourables among Republicans are on the move. I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen, as you note.
While I intended my comment about watching the fav/unfav numbers for all of those polled as more of a reflection of general election strength, you raise a valid point. And Trump’s GOP fav/unfav numbers would be expected to rise as his GOP preference numbers climb. People prefer a winner to a loser; so, as a candidate becomes stronger within a party, his/her unfav within a party should decline. (It’s the “sucking it up” phenom.) Intra-party unfav numbers are softer than inter-party unfavs.
Probably better to track net fav/unfav by DEM, GOP, and IND for each candidate than use the sloppier total fav/unfav numbers.
Well, one thing we can traditionally count on with most candidates fav/unf numbers is that they will be on the move. Far more so it seems than the preference numbers. A very fluid indicator, of something perhaps not that crucial to electability…
— One reason why I don’t take the negative fav/unf on Hillary or modestly positive fav/unf for Bernardo too seriously, especially this far out. Especially given all the bogus and exaggerated negative MSM coverage HRC has gotten so far. The NYT leading the pack in lies and pseudo scandalmongering about her.
Meanwhile, the media wants a race, and so Bernie gets a pass. Similar to how they crucified Hillary-like Al Gore in 2000 while giving cushy coverage to Bernie-like Duller Bill Bradley.
Unfavourables for a candidate with high name recognition were meant to be tough to shift.
Well in 1992 Bill Clinton’s unf’s were undoubtedly high, then recovered. And won in the fall handily against an incumbent I’d guess had better overall fav/unf numbers.
Documentation for the claim?
Well I did make clear it was a guess, which turned out as to Poppy to be wrong per Gallup historical fav/unf numbers. He started the election year strong but in the second half his numbers went south. The opposite for Bill.
Hey, I can’t be right all the time.
Why do you think that it was relatively easy to project that there would not be an early conclusion to the Iraq War?
GHWB’s baseline fav ratings weren’t high. Why on his own he never won an election higher than US Rep. Why Dukakis led early in the ’88 general election. That was the Democratic Party’s big fumble election, but even now it’s not clear to me that there was a viable Democratic candidate. The best of the lot IMHO was Paul Simon. But for many older base Democratic voters he may have echoed Stevenson and they knew how that had turned out twice.
Clinton only entered the ’92 election in October ’91. For most people, he was unknown until his 60 Minutes interview about an affair. So, high early unfavorables would be expected. Then there was the MSM swoon over Tsongas — which seemed inexplicable and ridiculous to me.
Paul Simon — Adlai without the speechmaking ability. Also seen in that year of young whippersnappers as a bit of a bow-tied fuddy-duddy geezer, in his late 50s iirc. How things have changed — now we have septuagenarians running on our side.
He obviously didn’t have the political ability to find a way to capture the mood of the times and connect w voters. Not a bad senator, but should have been a stronger leader on a few issues. Frankly, I always preferred the songwriting Simon over the political guy.
Tsongas — another weak, soft MA pol following up on softie Mike D. A bit sanctimonious as I recall as he publicly contrasted his upstanding private life with that of the despicable Bill. And probably hid a known serious medical condition.
Fav/Unf’s — I just don’t care. I must have been posting on this just to keep up my typing skills.
Someone give me a shout out when the debates start tomorrow. Even the one at the kid’s table. I’m planning a pizza/popcorn night …
Also, Hillary has had high name recog for many years, but her unf’s have gone up substantially in the past year.
That’s because they were artificially high to begin with, given she was kind of out of sight in that appointed office where she traveled all over the world and few followed what happened.
Now we’ve gone to the election season, and people’s political affiliations likely color their assessment. Add the above-mentioned negative press coverage of her during this campaign and it’s no wonder she’s barely staying afloat/underwater in these numbers. Especially so when she’s hit with often vague or unsubstantiated charges on a number of rather minor league allegations that people sense they’re being told they should feel outraged by.
IOW — the public likes Hillary Clinton better when she’s not on the national stage. (iirc, her favorable numbers improved when she retreated from 1995-1999.)
She was on the national stage, just no longer publicly advocating on controversial issues like national health care.
When you’re just concentrating on easy stuff like being a good WH First Lady Hostess, your popularity #s will be good. But once she entered the political arena and sounded off on the hot button issues of the day, and being a Clinton, her negatives were bound to go up.
Favorability ratings at this stage are essentially worthless.
See; Nate Silver (2012)
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/do-romneys-favorability-ratings-matter/?_r=0
“Overall, these early-stage favorability ratings have had a mixed track record as a predictor of election outcomes. The candidate with the better net-favorable rating in the early-going won the election in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1996, and 2008. But Mr. Clinton won the election in 1992, despite making a poor first impression on voters. On the flip side, Michael Dukakis had very promising favorability numbers early in the 1988 cycle, but they deteriorated over the course of the election cycle and he took a clear defeat. (I’m not sure where you’d classify the 2000 election because of the split between the popular vote and the Electoral College, or 2004 since George W. Bush and John Kerry had essentially the same net favorability rating in the early going.)”
We’re currently looking at favorability ratings from March through July 2015. Nate’s numbers for “early stage” favorability numbers are for January-June of the election year. IOW — the numbers we’ll begin to see almost six months from now. One thing that will pump up the favorability numbers among the total electorate in the first six months of next year is that the intra-party numbers for the leading candidates will go up.
Much ink was once spilled dismissing Reagan as an unelectable lightweight and bozo. Just sayin’.
Trump may be an unlikely candidate but there seems a pretty significant cohort in both parties whom are sufficiently unimpressed by politics to throw caution to the winds; which is what Republican voters seem to be doing. Running a Bush/Clinton dynastic revival is just begging for such an insurgency.
Not sure that Reagan was dismissed as an unelectable lightweight and bozo in 1980. For sure in 1968 (when it was easy to support the conclusion) and 1976 (when he was running against an incumbent). His major competition in 1980 was Bush who was more of a lightweight. Thus, the current chatter is applying an incorrect precedent.
What I’m seeing is that none of the politicians running for the GOP nomination are attractive to its electoral base. And the more they see of each one, the less attractive they become. The trends for early guys — Cruz, Rand, and Rubio — have all been downward. Bush’s has been relatively flat. Walker is still relatively unknown.
Cruz is struggling slightly upward against current. Agree Rand is tanking, gone; Rubio wobbly.
Trump’s perfect timing seems to be finding support from previously unengaged voters; sure, others have leached support to him but his sudden rise seems to have mostly grown among the previous “wouldn’t vote” cohort. I assume these are more difficult allegiances to break later. Plus we all know he’s catnip to the media.
What strikes me as unfounded is the central tenet of his campaign; that he’s his own man and self-funded. OK, he’s rich and he’s spending a million here, a million there and having the time of his life. But he’s up for scores of millions for the nomination or who knows how much for a third-party bid. One wonders if he will really part with hundreds of millions when the time comes.
And how does he maintain this aloof stance in the general election as the nominee? The GOP is going to run a self-funded candidate? Cronies pile in? I don’t get it; this is his whole shtick.
Given his central plank of “Puppets?” and his experience as a self-described crony capitalist when on the other side of the political transaction, it seems to me an unsolvable problem for his candidacy as presented.
Let’s look at your claim, Trump’s perfect timing seems to be finding support from previously unengaged voters. with data: Quinnipiac April 2015
Don’t know/N/A/Other/wouldn’t vote: 16%
Rubio 15%
Bush 13%
Walker 11%
Cruz 9%
Paul 8%
Qunnipiac July 2015
DK/etc. 13%
Trump 20%
Bush 10%
Walker 13%
Rubio 6%
Cruz 5%
Paul 6%
The latest Fox poll also shows a decline in the DK/etc. number by 3% since March.
Do you ever bother to check your “gut sense” with available data? Conventionally, it’s up to the one making a claim to support it with facts not for others to do the fact-checking research. From this one pollster, it appears that Trump has cut into the support for all the candidates except Walker. The latest Fox poll has Trump cutting into Walker instead of Bush.
RCP and Huffington’s pollster. No need to get so twitchy, sheesh.
Definitely the lightweight/bozo charge against RR was at least a strong undercurrent in the 1980 campaign, even if the Carter team focused more on the political extremist charge.
And fact is he was more of a lightweight — intellectually — compared to Poppy. But with his acting skills and some charm he was able to overcome his very superficial knowledge of the issues compared to HW.
The first time I ever sat down and watched/listened to GHWB was his ’84 VP debate. (For the obvious reason that I wanted to see the first woman VP nominee in action.) My major takeaway from it was, “I had no idea that Bush was so dumb.” The boys didn’t fall far from that tree.
Factoring in that RR was a better trained and more experienced public speaker, still would never rank GHWB as having more brain power than RR. At least not before RR exhibited obvious signs of dementia which was three years into his first term.
Nah, even the intellectually smart politically astute Bill Clinton acknowledged Poppy’s intellectual-political ability, even if it wasn’t quite at Bill’s level.
He was hampered however by his U-class upbringing as it prevented him from understanding and identifying with the lower 99%. As with, e.g., that badly fumbled response in one debate from a citizen asking about how the debt personally affected him. He looked puzzled, while Bill deftly re-phrased the inquiry along the lines intended.
As for RR’s brain power, he had some basic good political instincts, but beyond that talking about his “brain power” seems quite a stretch. He was basically clueless without a script and time to rehearse. A few choice, learned lines (occasionally from old movies) helped him in the governor’s office and in his 1980 race.
Recall for instance the many times in his first term, pre-dementia presumably, when his press sec’y had to come out the next day and correct Reagan’s several/many misstatements at a press conference. Too many facts for the guy to remember. His people were wise to limit the 1980 debates to just one. Of course, the MSM was always there to cover for him, as they did with GeeDub.
To those with some awareness of age-related dementia or developing Alzheimer’s that had casually observed RR on the public stage from 1964 could see signs of it in RR by 1980. Clearer signs by 1983.
When did Clinton make that assessment of GHWB’s intellectual heft? And when did he acquire this skill?
Mine is that RR and GHWB was/is in that one standard deviation above the the mean, but at the lower and not upper end. Will go two STD dev for Bill but at the higher end. However, the facility for more complex thought is effected by emotional health (at least below the true genius level). Another question is how much intellectual heft is required to hold the office of the President? Adams and Jefferson were undoubtedly “smarter” than Washington, but GW had a wider practical skills set.
The one quality/ability that I put at top of what we need in a President is a facility for choosing the best right people for senior positions and have an almost uncanny ability to know when to listen and when to reject and/or modify their assessments and advice. (GW, Lincoln, and FDR had that in spades.) It’s also the one that is most difficult to assess prior to assuming the office. Who have they hired in the past? Who does the nominee hire for VP (increasingly relevant in the modern era when home region is a less important criteria in the VP selection). Also have to factor in to what extent the choice was that of the candidate’s or that of the party elites.
Ferraro, Quayle, Palin, and Ryan told us a lot about the nominees.
Bill and HW: Clinton privately told of his respect for HW’s abilities in the political arena just before their first debate. It was a caution to his camp and himself not to underestimate Poppy. He was a bit nervous. Far more confident about dealing with Perot onstage.
GW had a more practical skills set than the polymath, inventor, Renaissance man TJ? He did probably evidence better leadership skills and personal courage during wartime than Tom.
As for best overall set of required skills, put JFK on that list, for the Cuban crisis and the Test Ban Treaty alone, even as he didn’t always get his first pick of advisers and had to choose in some areas from a dismal group (Pentagon). He was planning to clean house a bit in his second term, per Bobby’s oral memoirs. Probably including getting rid of Lyndon.
Well, Bill made his and I made mine. And GHWB got a whopping 37.5% of the vote. (Against GHWB, even the hapless Dukakis got a larger vote share than Carter (’80) and Mondale got.)
GW successfully ran his and his wife’s dower plantations. How many of his slaves did TJ free?
You have JFK on some sort of pedestal. Had he lived, it’s doubtful that he would have come close to what you imagine. Not saying that he would have been bad or could even have become one of the better Presidents — but we don’t and can’t know what his legacy would have been.
Successfully running a plantation, great on the resume in the 18th C, sure. Most of the founding fathers had slaves and we can downgrade them morally for that. The only one, far as I’m concerned, who was consistently above all that and against it, a man who truly espoused equality among the races and sexes was Tom Paine. But being foreign born and always too controversial, he was never going to be president.
As for JFK, I comment here mostly to counter some too-harsh by far remarks by others, especially you. He wasn’t perfect, made some mistakes, was human. But I’d rank him very high even without the second term which, following a thumping of Goldwater and bringing in a progressive majority in the congress, would have led to all the same positives in DP that occurred later, only without a poisonous war and all the other RW mischief your hero Lyndon allowed his Pentagon and CIA to undertake. But I’ll leave further discussion for another time.
Too harsh statements wrt JFK by me? Can’t even recall any such statements here by anyone. Just because I don’t engage in fantasies of how fantastic he might have been given another five years in office isn’t a criticism of him. It’s merely a recognition that we don’t and can’t know.
Whatever makes you think the GOP would have nominated Goldwater in 1964 if JFK had lived? That’s the problem with historical revisionism. Can’t remove one major actual event and then assume everything else would remain constant. Odds are that JFK would have been re-elected because up to that point voters were inclined to give a guy a second term. However, as JFK was concerned about his re-election possibilities, it wasn’t the slam dunk you seem to assume it was. I also don’t overlook the fact that JFK’s foreign policy team (the best and brightest) stayed on after he died.
The candidate preferences reflect the state of Congress and the commercial media.
A substantial majority of Americans have less of a clue what is actually going on in the country and the world that have in quite some time. Certainly at any point since 2008.
You’re saying that as a nation we are becoming politically and internationally dumber? This would be an alarming trend.
It would certainly explain Trump’s appeal.
We have institutions who now have the sole purpose of making the public dumber in order to feather their nests.
The members of Congress look more and more like WWE personalities. The heavies, the boring sober guys, and the bull goose loonies. And the public picks their personal favorites on what? Nothing really.
The public intellectuals of yore, the regular handful that used to appear in the MSM to educate the public and occasionally get into verbal fisticuffs, have also disappeared or died off. Now the explainers are the boring professional political advisers and journalists, usually the same two dozen or so recycled from year to year. Most of them financially or professionally dependent on the media outlets they appear on, so are unlikely to rock the boat the way the intellectual heavyweights used to.
Meanwhile some things in the world are becoming quite complex, and are in dire need of constant coverage and clear explaining, but it’s not happening.
The librul media strikes again!
Yes, it’s quite wonderful how the more dissatisfied with Congress the people become, the more control over it they give to Repubs. There is no notion of cause and effect operating, unfortunately. Perhaps the citizenry think Congress is some sort of reality game show, like Big Brother or maybe Survivor, haha.
While there isn’t too much doubt that much of the American electorate is essentially clueless, immune from data and grotesquely propagandized, there is also a sense that people are greatly frustrated and just don’t know what to do any more–the country works for the already well off and few others. Hence the ever greater willingness to advance the abjectly unqualified yapper-of-gut-reactions such as Trump and Carson (and Cruz, frankly.) Or the anti-intellectual and uneducated yokel such as Walker. The unqualified radical appeals, ala Hitler. Matters aren’t helped when the qualified (Clinton, Jeb!) are so stale and unappetizing, so much a feeling of more of the same failure….
The political process has been wrecked by the nation’s plutocrats, conservative activist masquerading as justices, and corporate lobbyists. The conservative movement has ruined and paralyzed the nation’s institutions but simply cannot receive the blame for it. The ramshackle machine was intentionally broken, and no one knows how to fix it anymore, least of all those that broke it. Certainly Donald Trump doesn’t, haha. Too late for a national course in logic, unfortunately….
The Republicans keep running against Congress. Here in the ‘burbs against the “liberal congress” or the “Democrat(sic) Congress”.