The Hart Reseach poll released by MSNBC today has some interesting findings. Forget the top-line, hypothetical head-to-head match-ups because there’s too much noise in those. Where this poll is good is that it takes the pulse and temperature of a sample of Americans. The sample skews old and young, more higher education, higher income, and liberal, short by 100% for Latinos, and it doesn’t appear that the results were not weighted to conform to the actual population demographics. Therefore, the utility of many of the percentages is weak. However, the numbers and trends within subgroups should be solid enough and the responses to certain questions are if not eye-popping then certainly striking.
One easy top-line message — The net favorable rating for Planned Parenthood is +16. No major change from the July poll. Don’t know/don’t care dropped from 25% to 22%. Negatives increased from 30% to 31% and positives increased from 46% to 48%. If the GOP wants to go all in on this issue, I say bring it on.
On gay and lesbian rights, 59% say that the country is moving in the right direction.
On more religion and banning abortion, the GOP is on the wrong side.
On marijuana, Sanders and a plurality of the public are standing alone on this.
On the political parties. The Democratic Party scored 12 points higher in positives and ten points lower in negatives than the GOP. Now if only Democrats could figure out how to translate that into House and Senate races.
Obama is plus six positive at 46%. Not bad for his seventh year in office. iirc GWB was scrapping along near 30% at this point in his tenure and his VP was ten points lower than that.
On the candidates.
The Democratic Party nomination has become sort of boring. Cllnton, Biden, or Sanders are close to being equally acceptable to 75%+ of Democrats. Biden and Sanders have made significant gains in the past two months and closed what was previously a large gap between them and Clinton. It would require a totally neutral and well informed person to interpret and say more than that about the results — and such a person probably doesn’t exist. So, we wait another month for the first debate before more can be said. (Note: I’ve refrained from commenting on all the other polls since the last Iowa DEM caucus Quinnipiac poll. The quality of those polls left too much to be desired and external validation was weak. Although the overall trends remained the same: Clinton still leads, Sanders is gaining, and Biden could step into a number two or number three position.)
Lots of stuff happening on the Republican side.
The kiddie table debate can be shut down. Pataki and Gilmore made strides in name recognition, and that mostly increased their “no way” rating. The others saw a decline in their acceptibility and “no way” ratings. Graham is the leader of the pack on “no way” at 67%. Overall, the more they are seen, the less they are liked. (Like Walker?)
Among those at the adult debate, Paul was hurt the most among the remaining contenders. Down nine points in acceptability and up ten points in “no way” which in this poll was 58%. If not for his family presidential election cottage industry, he’d be walkin at this point.
Kasich increased his name ID by 16 points and turned one-quarter of that into favorables and three-quarters of it into unfavorables. At 44% “no way,” he’s not out of it yet, but with his paltry 34% acceptable rating, he’s getting close to that point.
Christie has had a modest recovery but he’s still over 50% in “no way.”
The second biggest loser since July is Cruz. Lost 7 points in favorables and gained 6 points in “no way” — tied with Kasich at 44%.
Huckabee also lost a bit of ground, and like Cruz, his “no way” poll numbers have continuously increased.
Jeb, for the moment, has stopped his slide as acceptable at 55% and “no way” is up to 43%.
Fiorina gained 24 points in name ID and all of that went into her acceptable rating, 61%. Her “no way” stands at 28%. This is like the dream of every politician.
Carson gained 15 points in name ID and 20 points in acceptability to 69%. “No way” for him dropped to 23%. Think about that. 69% of Republicans view Carson as the most acceptable and least unacceptable of the candidates. A black man with zero political experience, no political expertise, and almost wholly ignorant of public policy issues.
Then there’s Trump. Not much change from July. More acceptable than Christie and similarly unacceptable. As acceptable as Huckabee and less unacceptable. Hard pressed not to give credit to Fiorina for putting a big crimp in Trump’s MO.
No projection on when Republicans will “get real” about this election. But they will. As soon as the party insiders (and money bags) agree with the rank-and-file voters on the “electable one.” The GOP voters are signaling their current consensus decision. That decision is more obviously emerging in this national poll, and the same but weaker signal can for the first time be seen in the most recent IA, NH, and FL polls.
How I would describe it is that they’ll take their idea of a GOP version of Obama. Because, above all else, they do want to win, and Obama won twice. Better yet, make it a GOP version of the Obama/Biden ticket.