Obama v. McCain (Washington)
Another week, another surprising general election match-up poll from Rasmussen. McCain and Obama are essentially tied in Washington at 45-44%. Obama loses independents, splits moderates evenly and loses 16% of Democrats to McCain, gaining just 11% of Republicans. Once again, remarkably enough, he loses 18-29 year olds and those 65+, but wins voters in their thirties and forties and even the 50-64 group. This poll puts Obama nine points behind Kerry’s 2004 result in the state. The only consolation for Democrats is that Clinton is running worse in the state than Obama. Needless to say, polls that show Democrats losing Washington in this cycle are hardly encouraging for supporters of either candidate. By way of comparison, I would note that even Dukakis won Washington by a point. Someone will point to this same fact and say, “Even Dukakis carried the state, so what are the odds of Obama losing it in reality?” Perhaps, but then winning Washington will be cold comort if the rest of the country responds to Obama as it did to Dukakis in November.
9 Responses to “Obama v. McCain (Washington)”
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Not to belabor a point you seem determined not to get, but polls like this show next to nothing about Democratic prospects in the fall in Washington or any other state, or the country as a whole. They only show to some slight degree what the relative strength of Hillary and Obama are in relation to McCain today. I know you are determined to know what the future is based on scanty info like this, but it’s just silliness. If you have one really terrible weakness, Daniel, it’s in making wild extrapolations into the future based on insufficient information. You’re much better at insightful analysis of the past and present. You might want to invest in a crystal ball and a Tarot deck if you insist on making predictions.
I am continually puzzled that McCain outperforms Obama in the 18-29 year old demographic. It’s just counter-intuitive to me, but Rasmussen has a pretty good track record. I would agree with conradg that a poll 8 months before an election is just barely north of totally useless, and does more to show the relative strength of Obama over McCain vs. Clinton vs. McCain (a thought that will be sitting heavily on the minds of the superdelegates).
What continues to be striking to me is that in the political environment that is the friendliest to the Democrats that I have ever seen in my life, either Obama or Clinton is not absolutely running away with it in the polls. Has McCain’s self-styled “Maverick” persona innoculated him against the handicap of being a Republican? It would be remarkable if the Democrats can’t pull this off.
I don’t think it’s much of a mystery.
(1) Biggest factor – as much as it pains those of us of all political stripes who find McCain appalling to admit this, I think we need to concede that, evaluated purely on political terms as a candidate for the presidency, he is an extremely strong candidate. He has the press on his side, he has an (undeserved) reputation for being a maverick (a particularly salient quality this cycle), an undeserved reputation for moderation, a somewhat deserved reputation for bipartisanship, and, of course, he has the whole war hero thing going for him. On top of that, his persona is appealing to the many people. Like any politician, he has negatives as well. For the most part, those negatives haven’t become apparent to many voters yet.
(2) Both Democratic candidates – again, looking at this from a purely political angle – have some significant weaknesses. Clinton, even if I’m wrong about Obama supporters staying home if she gets the nomination, and even if no new scandal erupts, is a deeply polarizing figure with high negatives. Obama is a candidate with some big positives and some significant negatives. I think Ross Douthat is entirely correct about him having a low floor and high ceiling.
(3) While conradg, like many Dems, is overly complacent, he does have a point. It is early, and the asymmetry of a decided Republican race and an undecided Democratic race does suggest that the current numbers overstate McCain’s strength. A related factor is that McCain, because of the nature of his primary victory, didn’t face a huge amount of negative campaigning from his own party, whereas both Democratic candidates, Obama in particular, have. That dynamic will not last forever.
(4) Rassmussen, despite a history of reliability, is an outlier right now, with every other poll showing much more strength for the Dems. This might be the place to note that Rassmussen is presumably using a participation model that reflects participation rates from past presidential elections. Those models might not be accurate this time around, especially with Obama as the candidate.
(5) We can’t ignore the fact that, in Obama’s case in particular, he has surprising strength in some Republican states.
All of that being said, I do think that the Dems have enough structural advantages this cycle that, assuming Obama takes the nomination, that they have to be regarded as narrow favorites for the presidency. If Clinton wins the nomination … well, put it this way: if the Obama voters do come home to her, and show up for the general, she has a shot, but even with that McCain would IMO be favored.
I’m not making “wild extrapolations.” I’m telling people what the polls are saying right now and offering some breakdown of who currently is and is not supporting the different candidates. I thought the Washington poll noteworthy like the New Jersey one because it is sharply at odds with what we should be seeing in reliably “blue” states. If the current numbers hold up over the course of the year, this is very bad news for Democrats. That doesn’t strike me as a wild and crazy thing to say.
If I haven’t made clear what I think of polls, let me restate it: polls are not predictive, and I am not proposing that what the polls say right now guarantee anything about what will happen in eight months. At this point, Dukakis was up 10 points in the national polls and would go on to extend his lead even more after the convention; he lost by almost nine. Obviously, you can’t say what will happen with great confidence this far away–there have been enough Democratic implosions over the years to warn us against this. Every post about polling already has these caveats in mind. I don’t repeat them each time, but I am always bearing them in mind. Polling is an attempt at observing public attitudes, and like anything else they change over time. It is possible that Obama could surge ahead to take ten-point leads all over the country, but the point is that he is *not yet* doing that on a state-by-state basis. When preferences change, I will take note of them just as I have been taking note of them up till now.
Rasmussen is an outlier, but it also has a record of being far more reliable than most outfits. I don’t know where anyone got the idea that Obama has particular strength in Republican states. The states where he is currently polling well are states that have been trending heavily Democratic in recent cycles. Elsewhere, he runs about as well as a typical Democrat.
I do notice that there were not any objections when I made extrapolations from a single incident, such as the IL-14 special election. That must be a fluke.
Daniel,
I’m not really disagreeing with you – at least maybe only a bit at the margins. But, by dismissing the other polls (which you do implicitly) and Obama’s strength in red, or redish states (and in this regard, there is considerable truth to your claim that the redish states that Obama is strongest in have been trending Democratic, but lets not forget that, for example, VA in 2004 went 54-46 for Bush), you are IMO spinning the results in a way that (slightly) over estimates McCain’s current strength. It’s interesting in this respect to look at Rasmussen’s electoral vote projections, which still are quite favorable to the Dems.
In fairness, I’m not sure that there is much if any state head to head general election data aside from Rasmussen right now. But that’s all the more reason to be even more cautious in interpreting the very limited data we now have.
Bottom line: it’s pretty clear that either match up – Clinton -McCain or Obama – McCain – is better for the Republicans than one would expect given the underlying structural advantages that the Democrats have this cycle. But how much better isn’t clear now, and won’t be clear for some time. And I think that’s about all we can say at this point.
“Bottom line: it’s pretty clear that either match up – Clinton -McCain or Obama – McCain – is better for the Republicans than one would expect given the underlying structural advantages that the Democrats have this cycle.”
And for the next 80-odd days, until Puerto Rico and maybe all the way until the convention in August, Clinton and Obama will continue to generate attack-ad fodder for McCain, who now has almost 3 months to rest, raise funds, do some more spadework to unite the party behind him, give presidential sounding speeches and go on presidential looking trips to Israel and Europe, while the Clinton/Obama deathmatch continues.
Given the near-collapse of his campaign last year, the rise of Huckabee who beat Romney in Iowa, the weakness of the Guliani and Thompson campiagns, etc., I hereby nominate McCain as the luckiest man ever.
“I’m not a member of an organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”
adam,
Very true. But one (perhaps minor) counter argument. In the last week, when Obama was taking several blows in the Dem race, at least until Wyoming stopped the bleeding, he actually increased his standing in McCain/Obama polling (per RCP’s poll average; Obama actually stayed about the same, but McCain dropped a little).
With that, I need to get back to work, so that’s probably the end of my commenting for the day.
Okay, one more quick comment before I get back to work. Oddly enough, in the past week Clinton’s numbers vis a vis McCain have improved rather dramatically (again, RCP poll averages).
It may be a fluke of some type – heck, it probably is – but a week of vicious Democratic infighting seems to have hurt … McCain.
“he actually increased his standing in McCain/Obama polling (per RCP’s poll average; Obama actually stayed about the same, but McCain dropped a little).”
Point taken. Anything that small (RCP average has it within 5, surely within the margin of error or very close) has to be taken with a grain of salt or three. He (McCain) will take a bit of a hit as he drops out of the news cycle somewhat, but he has to view the current Dem smackdown as a gift from the Almightly at this point.
” a week of vicious Democratic infighting”
We haven’t seen nothin’ yet.