Parsing the Polls: Inside the ‘08 numbers
By Chris Cillizza
THE FIX Washington Post’s Politics Blog 1/24/07
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll pegged New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) as the leaders in the coming presidential nomination fights.
While polls this far out — especially of a national sample rather than a pool of Iowa or New Hampshire voters — function more a test of name identification than a predictor of the eventual nominee, a look beyond the topline numbers gives us a glimpse of voter perceptions about the best known candidates.
Thanks to Post polling director — and all-around good guy — Jon Cohen, we have access to the some of the internal numbers from the Post survey.
Let’s Parse the Polls!
Clinton appears to start the race in the pole position as she led Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) 41 percent to 17 percent. Former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) placed third with 11 percent.
Clinton’s lead overall extends to most subgroups in the survey. A few are particularly interesting:
* Among non-white voters Clinton led Obama 56 percent to 16 percent. Cohen notes that “non white” encompasses African American, Hispanic, Asian and “other” voters, but the subgroup is dominated by black voters. In fact, if you combine black voters in the Post’s December and January surveys, Clinton leads Obama among black voters 60 percent to 20 percent. Given that Obama is black and would be the first African-American elected president, it’s somewhat surprising that the historic nature of his candidacy has not galvanized the black community. Of course there are two mitigating factors: First, former President Bill Clinton remains an iconic figure in the black community and some of his popularity appears to be wearing off on his wife. Second, Hillary Clinton remains a far better known commodity nationwide than Obama. As hard as it is to believe, there are still plenty of potential voters who know little or nothing about Obama; few people can say the same of Clinton.
Interesting numbers…it will be interesting to see if they hold true when the primaries start rolling in.
David,
Both candidates have a good deal of work to do in the African American community. If the Queen thinks she can sit on her lead, she is mistaken.
I tend to think that in an actual election, the same people that went out and voted for Bush would also turn out to vote against Clinton.
She won’t sit on that lead, Skep. She’s playing to win.
We’ll see how it all shakes out. We’ll see.
Is there anything actually Audacious about Hope? Seems no to me.