American democracy: The bland vs. the blind

Interesting. Even fascinating. And hugely depressing. Quinnipiac.

Clinton … gets 41 percent to Bush's 42 percent.

Even undeclared Biden squeezes by Bush, 43-42, although his undeclared status probably explains his lead.

Nevertheless, "Clinton gets 55 percent of Democratic voters nationwide." (Thirteen percent are pro-Biden.)

Then there's this. "If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for the Republican candidate or for the Democratic candidate in your district?" Republicans top the Dems by 2 percent (39-37); independents favor Republicans by 10. The same 2-percent GOP spread holds for the Senate.

And who remains the GOP's top spokesman, the embodiment of all things Republican? You got it. Trump, who leads Bush by 10.

Hillary has a net unfavorability rating of 11 percent. Trump's is 32, but, come on. Bush's net favorability is 2.

Hillary loses the "honest and trustworthy" question game by 20 points. Jeb wins it by 16.

"Would you say that Hillary Clinton cares about the needs and problems of people like you?" No, by 7 points. For Bush, yes, by 2.

Honest/Trustworthy and Cares/Problems are the two "most important personal qualit[ies] in deciding [one's] vote in the 2016 general election for president." Strong Leadership trails both by at least 7.

Please don't tell me American voters aren't yet paying attention. Presidential campaigns haven't received this much early attention since Andrew Jackson launched his second bid immediately after losing his first.

It's all quite interesting, to me, even fascinating — and depressing to the bone. This isn't to predict that Bush will win. He, or some fungible clod, will likely wind up with the same 47.2 percent that the fungibly cloddish Mitt Romney reaped in 2012. Likewise the House, anyway, will remain the same — the same sewer of witless obstruction. It's the sameness that's depressing.

 

Comments

[RP]

I've long been amused with the incoherence of American's hatred of Congress and their love for their Representative.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/nov/11/facebook-posts/congress-has-11-approval-ratings-96-incumbent-re-e/

[shsavage]

Nothing much has changed. Polls are typically not very accurate. See http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-the-polling-industry-in-stasis-or-in-crisis/

[Peter G]

Methodology is key. It's a telephone poll which means they surveyed people who did not immediately hang up when they found they were being polled. Which implies that they polled voters who were actively interested in politics and had some spare time. I just attempted to post this identical critique but sadly it failed. If they would but tell us, which they never do, how many people they called who refused to answer or just hung up the call we could calculate how wildly inaccurate their margins of error are.

[Bob]

Americans are paying attention, but to what? At the moment most are thrilling to the Trump Show. See him suck up oxygen! Suck Donald suck! Once the media and public tire of the pneumatics a new set of entertainments will erupt onto the midway. Unfortunately for Republicans, they're a rich source of interesting acts. Rubio can't wait to get his finger on the launch buttons, start Cold War II with Russia and replace a proposed living wage with a *government subsidy* in the form of, you guessed it, a tax credit. Walker will provide laughs galore as he defends the Wisconsin economy. Jeb has his own email scandal lurking, thinks people just aren't working hard enough, and still has to defend his respectability-challenged brother while employing George's foreign policy team. Accurate or not, there are plenty of polls to come.

[bpuharic]

If you ask these folks the names of the players on their local sports team they'll rattle 'em off right away. Name 5 SCOTUS justices? Blank stare. Just like more folks were in favor of the Keystone pipeline than Obamacare

Lots and lots of stupid people out there

[Turgidson]

Obama was losing nationally to "generic Republican" at this stage, if I remember correctly. The clown car hasn't even puttered its way to the first debate yet, and I think Jeb has quietly benefited from the Trump bonanza by looking like a reasonable human being compared to him and the other GOP candidates who feel obligated to say crazy things for attention. But I still think he's got a jaw made of glass and is a sure loser, either in the primaries or the general.

We'll see what becomes of Hillary's numbers. The media is doing all it can to soften her up and I guess it's working (I thought she was less vulnerable to this sort of thing given her longevity, maybe I'm wrong). I still think I was right to dismiss the email story as a nothingburger on the merits, but as we're seeing, there's nothing to stop the media (even the "liberal NYT" it turns out) from keeping the story going. The cycle of [shocking headline] -> [breathless chatter] -> [story falls apart under scrutiny] -> [story quietly walked back after many days of discussion] is not Hillary's friend, that's for sure. Now the media is saying that each trumped up "story" is a problem for her because it reinforces a "narrative" about her. A narrative the very same media is 90% responsible for propagating in the first place based on previous trumped up nonsense. What a clever swindle. We'll see. If Hillary keeps taking on water, there's still time for Biden or Gore to jump in. But I hope it doesn't come to that.