McCain's Collapse

News broke today of a major shakeup of the McCain presidential campaign. This on the heels of a second poor financial quarter and a mere $2 million cash on hand. The financial and staff disaster however simply reflects the trouble the campaign was in with voters.

While McCain was widely said in 2005 and 2006 to be the front runner for the Republican nomination, he consistently polled a few points behind Rudy Giuliani in that period. Since January of 2007, McCain's national level of support from Republican voters has steadily declined from nearly 25% to just over 15%.

That national decline would be bad enough for any campaign, but the situation in the early primary states has been even worse. The most dramatic failure has been in South Carolina, the state where McCain invested most heavily and where he did the most politically to mend fences demolished in the 2000 campaign. McCain's frequent visits, staff allocation and public shifts to reposition himself vis a vis South Carolina political issues and political and religious leaders initially paid off in support from around 40% of Republicans in the state as of early 2006. But the trajectory of support there has been profoundly down, standing today at around 17%.

In New Hampshire, the launch pad of the 2000 campaign, McCain has also steadily declined, from around 35% in early 2006 to half that--- 18%--- now.

In Iowa, the state McCain wrote off in 2000 and initially tried to win this time, support has crashed from 25% to under 10%.

And in Florida, the big state that moved up its primary this year, McCain has dropped from a high of 27% to 12%.

The collapse of campaigns can be attributed to poor strategy, poor management, poor fundraising. But the more fundamental cause is lack of support, a failure to connect with voters. The trajectory of the McCain campaign has been clear in these data for some time. Republican voters were simply not embracing the McCain candidacy. That was evident during his "front runner" period when journalists couldn't believe Giuliani's lead in the polls meant McCain wasn't the front runner. It became more evident as Giuliani surged in early 2007 while McCain started to decline. And it is stunningly clear now as Republican voters have been deserting the campaign in state after state after state. (Note Giuliani's trajectory is now similar to McCain's. A topic for another day.)

Maybe different management would have raised more money and spent it less profligately, but only a message more attuned to Republican voters' preferences and concerns could have changed this campaign. Given McCain's positions over the past 7 years, perhaps no message could have been crafted that would have bonded voters to him. Only a miracle of Biblical proportions is likely to bring this one back.

Would you vote for a (fill in the blank) for President?

More than any recent election, the 2008 presidential contest raises the issue of whether Americans are ready to vote for a ... (woman, black, Hispanic, Mormon) for president. In 1960 Kennedy's Catholicism was a key question. In 1984 Geraldine Ferraro gave us the possibility of a woman a "heart beat away", if not quite in the oval office. With at least four "group" members in the race this year, the question of what groups are acceptable and not is again before us.

The data are pretty clear that women and African-American's have gained acceptance, at least in the abstract. In data collected since 1956 by Gallup, and more recently by a variety of other pollsters, we can track changes over time to the question (as phrased by Gallup):

If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be ______, would you vote for that person?

Most pollsters use a similarly worded question. (Interestingly Gallup used "well qualified MAN" rather than "person" until the 1990s, except of course when asking about a female candidate.) The graph above shows trends in these questions for all groups and all pollsters I could find since the 1950s, 144 questions in all.

The striking effect of Kennedy's campaign and election is clear. While about 70 percent of the public said they would vote for a Catholic from 1955-1959, this jumped over 10 points following Kennedy's election. (62% said they would vote for a Catholic in 1940, the earliest poll I could find.) Since then it has gradually risen to a plateau in the mid-90s, though still slightly below the number comfortable voting for a "Baptist", the long time favorite in this graph.

Support for Jewish candidates has remained a bit below that for Catholics, maintaining a small but reliable gap. Interestingly, Kennedy's Catholicism may have helped increase acceptance for Jews as a side effect of the nation's consideration of religion in 1960. The upturn in acceptance of Jews as candidates tracks with the rise of Catholic acceptability in the early 1960s.

Mormon's may or may not have benefited from that movement as well. I could locate no questions about Mormon candidates prior to 1967 so we can't know what the trend was in the 1950s or early 1960s. In 1967, however, acceptance of Mormon candidates ran about 7 points behind that of Jews, and closer to 15 points behind Catholics. In the time since, there have only been two repetitions of the Mormon question (that I could find), and these two indicate stability through 2000 and a decline in 2007. With only 3 polls, it is very dangerous to conclude that there has been a real decline, or even to claim a very good estimate of the acceptability of a Mormon candidate. But given the little evidence that is available, Mormons clearly face more resistance from the public than Catholics or Jews (not to mention Baptists.) Governor Mitt Romney's campaign gives us an excellent chance to see if this resistance is primarily because voters haven't thought about it, and once confronted with an attractive candidate, as with Kennedy, will revise their opinions, or if this represents more strongly held suspicion of Mormons that will continue to register in the polls.

The one religiously defined group that should probably not jump in the presidential race is atheists. The public remains strongly opposed to putting non-believers in the White House. Despite some growth in tolerance of atheists this group still is acceptable to only just over 45% of the public. Homosexuals are the only group less acceptable than atheists, but that appears to have changed by 1999 when homosexual candidates gained acceptance by 59% of the public. (Again, beware the small number of polls that have asked about homosexuals. This is not a very reliable estimate, based on only four polls.)

The two groups that have moved most dramatically are not religiously defined. Women and blacks have moved from 50% or less support in 1955 to currently high acceptance rates. Blacks have in fact moved up to match Catholics and perhaps even Baptists in professed willingness to vote for a member of the group. Women were on a similar trajectory until recently. Since 2000 there has been some modest decline in acceptance of women candidates. It is possible that this is due to voters thinking of Hilary Clinton specifically in response to this question recently, raising a partisan bias, or it could be a fluke in the most recent half dozen polls. I've not located polls asking about support for an Hispanic candidate so not trend or other data are available on that for comparison.

The overall rise across most of these groups in willingness to vote for candidates from the group reflects some important changes in society over the past 50 years. The relative stratification of groups, however, is also generally stable. The order of acceptability--- Baptist, Catholic, Jew, Mormon and atheist--- has not shifted even as level of acceptance has risen. Women, blacks and perhaps homosexuals have seen dramatic rises, with the first two groups changing order with other groups. Still, the stratification remains clear, if reduced in magnitude. And some groups such as atheists and homosexuals remain well short of widespread acceptance as potential presidential candidates.

It is also worth noting that this measure of potential vote does not mean that in the actual choice these characteristics are irrelevant to voting decisions. Presented with an actual woman, black, Mormon, Jew or Hispanic, each of these categories may still produce a reduction in the probability of voting support. At least if the opponent is a Baptist male. It seems likely than only the election of presidents from these categories can assure us that such categories have become irrelevant in fact.

The Romney campaign offers the best opportunity for a natural experiment to see how malleable these perceptions may be. Note that the acceptance of Catholics did not increase until after the 1960 election. The last time the Catholic question was asked in Gallup data was December of 1959, and not again until August 1961. We are left to wonder if Kennedy increased acceptance during his nomination race and/or during the general election or if this change occurred only after he was elected president. Romney will have to overcome the resistance to Mormon candidates, and with the huge increase in polling, we should be able to use his race as an opportunity to learn something about how rapidly such attitudes can change, or not. Let's hope pollsters will monitor this question for us. Interesting social science, in any case.

Pres08: Willingness to vote for candidates

Fox/Opinion Dynamics has a nice new poll out tonight. One striking result is that NONE of the six leading candidates enjoys having more strong supporters than strong opponents. Fox asked:

Now I am going to read a list of possible candidates for the next presidential race. For each one, please tell me whether you would definitely vote for that candidate for president, if you might vote for that candidate, or if under no conditions would you vote for that candidate.

The "don't know" rate for all these candidates is pretty low, 10% or less.

The result, plotted above, shows that all six have considerably more voters saying they would never vote for the candidate than saying they definitely would vote for them. In this figure being towards the upper left is bad news, lower right is good news. As in previous polls, former Speaker Newt Gingrich fares worst among these candidates, with very substantial numbers saying they would not vote for him under any circumstances. The rest of the candidates are somewhat bunched together.

The further a candidate is from the diagonal line (or closer to the lower left corner) the more people said they "might" vote for them. (Recall the DK rate is both low and pretty even across candidates, so this is mostly a true statement.) Senator Clinton is the candidate with the fewest "might" vote for responses, but even in her case 34% said they would consider her. Obama shows the most room for growth with 45% saying "might" vote for him. The others range from 39-44% saying might.

So these front runners have a long way to go, and must all face stiff strong opposition from significant chunks of the electorate. Or put differently, those persuadable voters will matter a lot.

Pres08: Fox Poll's Favorable/Unfavorable Ratings

Fox News' new poll, completed 1/30-31/07, provides a new look at the favorable and unfavorable ratings of the leading presidential contenders. Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the pack in the balance of favorable to unfavorable ratings in the new Fox poll with 54% favorable to 24% unfavorable . John McCain enjoys a net-positive evaluation, though not as strongly positive as Giuliani, at 45%-29%. Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton strongly divides voters yet manages a 50%-44% net positive rating. Less well known John Edwards has an 8 point net positive (41%-33%) while Barack Obama has the best balance, 41%-20% but the largest number of voters unable to rate him (38%.)

Three political figures have net negative ratings in the Fox poll. Mitt Romney is the least well known among all the candidates and suffers a net negative rating of 11%-22%, but with 67% unable to rate. Newt Gingrich, who has adopted a wait-and-see approach to the presidential campaign, suffers a 22%-49% net negative, while Al Gore, who seems quite uninterested in the race, has a somewhat better but still net negative 39%-51%.

(For comparison, see my similar analysis of an early January CBS News poll here. That post also discusses the plots and how to read them in greater detail.)
























The extent to which partisans divide over the candidates is clear above. Hillary Clinton remains the most polarizing figure with strongly net negative views among Republicans, strongly positive views among Democrats, and a near balance yet net negative among independents. (The purple dot is independents, the black dot is the population as a whole, with the now conventional red for Republican and blue for Democrats.)

McCain and Giuliani do well among independents and even with Democrats. Gore and Gingrich in contrast both divide the electorate and manage net positives only among their own partisans. Edwards splits partisan camps, though not as strongly as Clinton and roughly balances the sides and among independents. Obama does quite well among independents, but is developing a Republican opposition. Romney remains a mystery to all partisan groups, which cluster and don't know him.

























There has been some movement in the Fox ratings, but the most recent prior poll varies a great deal in how old it is. Clinton's most recent poll was just last October, and little seems to have changed. Several other candidates were measured in May 2006. But Edwards' last reading was in October 2004 (during his run for the Vice-Presidency) and Gingrich's dates back to 1998! So look at change with due caution.
























Finally, the balance of not knowing the candidate versus knowing but not enough to rate them can be instructive. In the earlier CBS News poll, there was a clear differentiation between the better known and the lesser known candidates. The new Fox poll lacks almost all of the lesser known figures, so that pattern is less pronounced here than in the CBS data (here)
Still, among these candidates, it is interesting the Obama now more closely resembles the better known candidates, while only Romney remains in the space occupied by the least known in the CBS poll.

Pres08: National Trial Heats

Updated 11/8/07




















(This is a BIG graphic. Click once or twice for full resolution.)

This post tracks the national Republican vs. Democrat trial heats for the 2008 presidential election. It is updated in place so a link to this page will always come to the most recently updated trial heat data.

Warning note: Recent polling has given most attention to pairings of Giuliani or Thompson against Clinton or Obama. Romney and especially McCain have been less likely to be included in a test. Likewise Edwards has often been omitted from trail heat questions. This means that the current estimate for McCain vs. Edwards, for example, is heavily influenced by the single recent poll that tested that pairing. When using these charts, look to see that the latest estimates are based on several recent polls. If not, then the results will primarily reflect just the single most recent result. That does not mean the trend estimate is wrong, just that it is based on less data than we usually would like to have.

There is a link to this page from the Trial Heat thumbnail in the right-hand column.

The trend line is only estimated and plotted when there are at least 8 data points to fit. If there are fewer, then only the points are plotted. The estimated candidate support in the figure heading is the latest trend estimate if there are 8 or more polls. Otherwise it is the median of the polls that are available.

The "latest poll" can vary across pairs of candidates because not all polls ask about all pairs.

Polling has avoided trial heats among the least known candidates so far. More will be added as data become available.

I'll avoid commentary here, where the point is just the display of the data. For commentary and other posts on the 2008 Presidential race, click on the "Pres08" label below or on the link in the right column of the page under "2008 Trial Heats".

National Support for 2008 Presidential Candidates

Updated 11/15/07




































The estimated trend is printed as part of the graphs. For the top candidates, this is always the local regression trend estimate. In the individual candidate graphs below if there are 10 or more polls the trend estimate is printed. If less than 10, the median of the polls is printed and no trend line is drawn.

This post is your one-stop update on the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential primary national polling. (STATE primary/caucus polls will also have a space, but not yet. Soon. Real Soon.) The graphs will be updated in place as each new poll is completed. The top four candidates (based on the polls) in each party get a graphs to themselves, as above. ALL candidates in each party appear in larger graphs below. Click on the graphs once or twice to see the full resolution version. These include drop-outs as well as currently active candidates, plus a few non-candidates such as Rice and Gore (at least as of today.)

For all posts on the 2008 presidential contest, click on or search for the "Pres08" label at the bottom of the post.

The link in the right column of the front page will bring you here throughout the primaries and will announce new poll updates.

Pres08: National vs State Primary Polls

Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are doing better in national polling than in the critical early primary and caucus states. Clinton leads all national Democratic polls, while Giuliani leads McCain in 33 of 43 national polls. But neither candidate does as well when we turn to the polling from the early voting states. Conversely, John Edwards does considerably better in all but two state polls than he does nationally.

Clinton's national support is significantly higher than it is in Iowa and New Hampshire. Nevada and South Carolina (with only 3 polls together) are just about equal to her national standing.

Giuliani has seen some convergence in state and national polls, though his current national support is still above support in three of the states, IA, NH and SC.

The sharpest contrast is with Edwards who does considerably better in IA, NH and SC than he does nationally. Nevada is again the state closest to his national standing.

McCain, Obama and Gingrich show the states spread around their national numbers. McCain in particular has seen some apparent decline in NH over the past 12 months, bringing initially favorable NH number down to his national levels. South Carolina with only 4 polls appears to have slipped a bit as well, but remains well above the national. In Iowa, McCain does no better but also not much worse than he does nationally. The trend in NH must, of course, be of concern for his campaign. Likewise, McCain's national support has been essentially flat over the past year.

In Obama's case, there are relatively few polls so trends are not yet clear. There is not a wide gap between state and nation, though the national is a bit above most of the state polls.

Gingrich is still well behind Giuliani and McCain and his state polling if pretty evenly distributed above and below the national trend. Given the limited nature of his campaign so far there have been few events to affect these trends.

As we all know, the early primary states are not a representative sample of the country, so divergence of state from national polls is to be expected. But the political consequences of doing well nationally but less well in these four states can be profound. We'll keep an eye on these trends.

Pres08: New CBS Poll on Favorability

John McCain and Rudy Giuliani lead the Republican field by a wide margin in terms of the balance of "favorable" and "unfavorable" impressions the public holds of them. On the Democratic side, Hilary Clinton and John Edwards lead the field, while Barack Obama has a net favorable image but with many voters still unable to express a reaction to him. Other candidates either remain near complete unknowns or suffer from net negative evaluations from voters in the cases of Al Gore and John Kerry.

The new CBS News poll taken 1/1-3/07 gives the latest comprehensive look at 2008 presidential contestants. The survey included the standard favorable/unfavorable question, which includes "undecided" and "haven't heard of" options as well. The data here are for all adults, not just partisans of the candidate's party.

The graph above plots favorable impressions on the horizontal and unfavorable views on the vertical axis. The sum of favorable and unfavorable cannot exceed 100%, so the data must fall in the triangle with the grid lines. The darker diagonal line from (0,0) to (50,50) marks the region of more net negative evaluations (above this line and and to the left) versus the region of net positive evaluations (below and to the right.) While some enemies are inevitable, candidates would rather be closer to the bottom right corner of the figure, with high net positive ratings. The closer a candidate is to the lower left corner the more voters failed to give a favorable OR an unfavorable evaluation. For the lesser known candidates, this is dramatic as they all cluster very near the bottom left corner.

A number of people have quite correctly pointed out that current polling on presidential candidates is largely a function of name recognition and national visibility, as the performances of well known candidates Clinton, Giuliani and McCain demonstrate. The polls may also not be very meaningful predictors of future success. A classic example is from April 1991, when Bill Clinton scored 8% favorable, 12% unfavorable and 80% unable to give any impression of him. That places him solidly in the company of Romney, Richardson, Brownback and Hagel. Of course that didn't stop him from gaining the nomination.

So we should certainly not look at these data as predictions of who is "destined" to win or lose. That is not my purpose here. We have a year to watch the evolution of support for these candidates. And to do that, of course, we have to look at how they stand throughout this year. Which front runners will stumble and when? Which unknowns will build a following to emerge from national obscurity to serious contention? These data are crucial for understanding that process, and that is my purpose here, rather than a simple minded (and empirically weak) implication that those currently ahead are "inevitable." It is hard for reporting or analysis to avoid emphasizing the current strengths of candidates, but experience shows that this can change substantially over time. Recall the "inevitable" triumph of Howard Dean as seen in November 2003 when discussion actually surfaced of his vice-presidential choice! We would all, me included, be well advised to treat these data as dynamic and not as fixed for the next 12-15 months. But dynamic data is fun! So let's start watching it.

The cluster of Giuliani, McCain and Edwards represents a group with about a 2-1 favorable-unfavorable ratio, suggesting pretty broad appeal. But even among this group around 40% of voters are unable to express an evaluation.

In contrast, Hilary Clinton holds slightly higher favorable ratings but also nearly twice as high unfavorable ratings, putting her only slightly to the "good" side of the favorable-unfavorable divide. Her higher evaluation rate of 80% is no surprise but with only 20% of voters yet to decide about her there is less room for new support or opposition to develop, while the Giuliani, McCain and Edwards grouping can move rather substantially from voters making up their minds.

Senator Barack Obama trails these four substantially in the number of voters able to evaluate him, though he has the advantage of a 3-1 favorability ratio among those who do rate him. Over 70% of the sample were unable to rate him, which shows how far the Senator has to go in establishing himself with the public, despite the dramatic media coverage of him in the last quarter of 2006.

The two defeated past Democratic nominees fare less well. Al Gore and John Kerry both suffer from more unfavorable than favorable ratings. In Gore's case, this comes despite positive public comment on his movie "An inconvenient truth" which was thought by some to be his route back to elective office.

Among the less well known candidates there is little meaningful variation at this point. Almost all draw slightly more unfavorable than favorable evaluations, but with something on the order of 80% unable to rate these choices there is little to suggest the favorable-unfavorable ratio means much. Also, the CBS poll question does not supply either party or current office, so voters are left with little to base spur of the moment opinions on. A question about "Democrat Tom Vilsack, former Governor of Iowa" or "Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas" might trigger more impressions than the simple "Tom Vilsack" and "Sam Brownback" used in the survey. The question CBS used probably does a better job of avoiding partisan projection and therefore is a better measure of awareness than one that described the candidates. On the other hand, many voters are so peripherally aware of these candidates that a little help remembering who is who can trigger real as well as top of the head opinions.

One seeming peculiarity is the rate of non-response to even the well known candidates. Clinton has been in the national spotlight for 14 years and Kerry and Gore have both been nominees of their party, yet 19% failed to express an opinion of Clinton as did 22% for Gore and 30% for Kerry. Are voters REALLY so removed from politics that more than one in five really don't recognize these candidates? Well, not quite. The survey gave voters an "undecided" option as well as a "haven't heard enough about the candidate to have an opinion" option. Those two are folded together in my figure above and in most analysts review of these sort of survey questions, but it turns out the distinction is pretty interesting.

The figure below compares the rate of "undecided" with the rate of "don't know enough" for all the candidates. A clear and substantial divide separates the candidates. Long time presidential contenders Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Edwards, Giuliani and McCain are not very likely to draw a "don't know enough" response. In fact, less than 20% (and in the cases of Clinton, Gore and Kerry well under 10%) of the public actually says they haven't heard enough to have an opinion. Among this group of candidates, most of the failure to rate a candidate is due to choosing the "undecided" option. While one might think of that as lack of knowledge, this result suggests that genuine ambivalence about candidates is part of the story as well. For these most prominent candidates, ambivalence outweighs lack of knowledge.
























For the less well known candidates, the reverse is dramatically clear. The candidates in the lower left corner of the top figure are all much more likely to suffer from voter ignorance than ambivalence. Upwards of 70% say they don't know enough about most of these, with only about 10% expressing ambivalence. Richardson and Biden are a little more likely to be known but also more likely to draw an "undecided" response.

This plot also shows that Barack Obama remains more in the company of these less visible candidates than in the company of the best known six. His "don't know enough" rate remains near 50% with only modest indecision. It will be interesting to see what trajectory each of these candidates take over the next months as they become better known. Obama has enjoyed the first burst of coverage that emergent candidates can ride to national prominence. But he clearly has a long way to go to catch up with the top tier of candidates.

So far I've focused on the perceptions of the national sample of adults as a whole. What about within their party, which is the crucial issue for nomination, of course. The CBS poll provides a very helpful breakdown of reaction by party, allowing us to look at how partisanship affects these favorable or unfavorable impressions of candidates. For nominations questions, we can focus on the candidate's party. But an extra bonus is that the party breakdown also allows us to look at how polarizing each candidate is.

In the figure below a red dot represents Republican respondents, blue for Democrats and purple for independents. The black dot is for the population as a whole. In several of the plots the total and the independent points overlap, showing only the black for the total population. As above, the horizontal axis is favorable and the vertical axis is unfavorable.

























The most striking, if not surprising, result is that Hillary Clinton is indeed the most polarizing figure in the field. Her favorable-unfavorable ratio among Democrats is 72-11, while among Republicans it is 9-78. Independents split a bit to the positive side, 41-33. The population split is 43-38. It is a stable of analysis of Clinton that she must win despite the near monolithic opposition among Republicans and win a narrow majority by combining equally monolithic Democratic support with a small margin among independents. So far that story is well supported by the evidence. It is also worth noting that 15% of Democrats they they are undecided about her, as do 23% of independents. That ambivalence seems to remain her vulnerability.

Previous Democratic nominees Gore and Kerry are almost equally disliked among Republicans, but nether enjoys close to the support Clinton has among Democrats.

John Edwards falls short of Clinton's support among Dems, but he also draws less negativity from Republicans and does slightly better among independents.

Barack Obama appeals to independents nearly as well as he does to Democrats, a potential substantial advantage, while Republicans are only a slightly net negative about him. However, the high inability to rate Obama makes this comparison a limited one. As he emerges it will be interesting to see if he can continue to win independents so well and how much Republican's learn to dislike him.

No other Democrat is well known enough to make analysis of these data profitable. All need a substantial gain in visibility before distinctions such as these will be meaningful. This includes 2004 candidate Dennis Kucinich who is rated about the same as Chris Dodd.

On the Republican side, McCain remains the strongest candidate in gaining favorable ratings from outside the Republican camp. But he also fall short of Giuliani in favorable-unfavorable ratio WITHIN the Republican party. McCain gains a 48-10 favorable-unfavorable rating among Republicans, but Giuliani's is 63-9. Both draw about equally among independents and McCain does better among Democrats.

These data illustrate the dilemma many analysts have pointed out: Giuliani is leading most of the polls taken among Republicans. But analysts wonder how many Republicans know about his positions on many social issues that differ from those of the core of Republican partisans. These analysts dismiss the polling, saying that as voters learn more, Republicans will turn away from Giuliani. This leads them to conclude Giuliani is unlikely to be able to win the nomination. At the same time, McCain has not yet become the favorite candidate among Republicans, and especially among the conservative base which has spent years castigating McCain for not being conservative enough. The fragility of both of these candidacies is apparent in these data.

But then who? These data clearly show that none of the other candidates has yet gained enough recognition to be considered a likely challenger for supremacy. Romney remains quite low in favorable ratings among Republicans, despite a significant amount of media coverage. Likewise Brownback. And Hagel and Hunter barely register. (My own former Governor, Tommy Thompson, didn't make CBS's candidate list.)

As I said at the start, the danger of these polls is that they reinforce the status quo without a sense of how things can change. It is entirely likely that some candidate not currently in the top tier will emerge as a substantial challenger before the nomination is won. We just don't know who from these data.

We can get a taste of very early dynamics by looking at change in favorability over time. The CBS poll provided earlier ratings for eight candidates. Most of these are from summer or early fall of 2006, but some are much older. Each panel of the figure below gives the base date from which change is measured. The arrow points from the earlier to the current poll.
























On the Democratic side, Clinton gained about 10 points on the favorable side, while adding only a couple of unfavorable points since September. This was enough to push her from a net rating that was slightly negative to one that was net slightly positive.

Edwards was a near-mirror image of this. He gained little favorability, but reduced his unfavorable rating by 10 points, giving him a significantly improved net rating, from slightly net positive to significantly more positive.

Both Kerry and Gore moved the wrong direction, becoming more net negative than they started, though both were already negative on balance. Finally, Biden and Kucinich show small movements but against bases well in the past (20 years in Biden's case!)

Only McCain and Giuliani are available for the Republican trends. McCain gained over 10 points of favorable ratings, at the cost of about 5 more points of negative rating. This improved his position a bit.

The Giuliani comparison is quite negative, but that is surely due to the over two year old base from 2004. His movement in other polls has been substantially positive. See the analysis of Marist Poll trends for Giuliani (and others) here.

As the winter and spring develop, I'll revisit these data, adding dynamics that I hope will tell the story of who emerges, who fades and how the 2008 nomination battle shapes up.

Rep, Dem Candidates in Early Primary States

American Research Group (ARG) has reported polls of Republican and Democratic support in four early primary/caucus states. The polls are of 600 respondents for each party (with partisans plus independents who say they will participate in the party primary or caucus.) The field periods were IA 12/19-23, NH 12/26-27, NV 12/19-23 and SC 12/21-23.

First, the Republicans.

The strikingly obvious result is that none of the candidates outside the top four have any traction at this point. While there is time yet to "emerge", Brownback, Gilmore, Hagel, Huckabee, Hunter, Pataki and Thompson have a long way to go.

So meanwhile attention remains focused on two "front runners" and two "maybes". Giuliani and McCain each lead in two states. Giuliani leads in Iowa (28-26) and Nevada (31-25) while McCain leads in New Hampshire (29-25) and South Carolina (35-28). And let's not forget the margin of error, which allows all of these to be essentially "even".

The "maybes" are Gingrich and Romney, in that order. While Gingrich trails the top two by a substantial margin, he has significant support (14%-22%) in all four states. While the former Speaker has considerable baggage, he would be a more mainstream Republican nominee than either McCain or Giuliani-- a fact often overlooked in the enthusiasm for McCain at least. Romney is far back, above the "zeros" but well short of even Gingrich's status. But Romney has the advantage of being a new face who may yet mobilize support among those Republicans who distrust McCain and may come to weigh Giuliani's more liberal social issue positions. Still, Romney has to improve considerably in at least two of these early states to become seriously competitive.

On the Democratic side.

Here too are a number of hopefuls who are currently at or very near zero support. Biden, Clark, Dodd, Gravel and Richardson are all under 5% everywhere. Kucinich is slightly stronger, hitting 5% in Iowa, but below that in the other states.
























Vilsack does pretty well in his home state of Iowa, but has yet to gain any support elsewhere. And Kerry does poorly for a past winner in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Clinton continues to lead the field in each state, so the question remains who will become her primary challenger. In these data, John Edwards and Barack Obama each finish second in two states. Edwards leads Obama in Iowa (20-10) and South Carolina (31-10). Obama leads in New Hampshire (21-18) and Nevada (12-8).

In presidential primaries with a clear front runner, the key dynamic is driven by the emergence of a clear alternative to the front runner. On the Democratic side that battle for emergence as an alternative to Clinton is clearly underway. On the Republican side, we have a legitimate battle for the front spot, but with two candidates who both have substantial vulnerabilities within the party. There we may have a more interesting contest.

'08 Presidential Candidate Support and Opposition

Polls are looking at support for and opposition to potential 2008 presidential candidates with a pair of interesting questions. Gallup uses "Now, I am going to read a list of people who may run for president in 2008. For each, please say whether you, personally, would or would not like to see this person run for president in the next election." Marist College uses "Do you want to see (candidate) run for president in 2008 or not." These questions are asked of ALL adults, not just partisans of either party. This makes the results a bit unclear-- if a Democrat says she would like to see "x" run, when "x" is a Republican, does that mean she would consider voting for "x" or that she thinks "x" would be easy for a Democrat to beat? Thus these questions are not measures of support in party primaries, and may not be good indicators of general election strength. On the other hand, perhaps most voters are not as strategic as political professionals, and so may just be indicating how much they "like" potential candidates of either party. In any case, let's take a look at recent results.

The figure above shows possible candidates of either party, red for Republicans and Blue for Democrats, in the Gallup poll taken in late November. The plot is the percent saying they would like to see run on the horizontal axis and the percent saying they would NOT like to see the candidate run on the vertical axis. This kind of plot allows us to see immediately the balance of support and opposition to each candidate, and the extent to which voters have formed opinions about each candidate. That is a lot of information in a single plot.

The plot is also unusual because the sum of the two percentages cannot be over 100%, so the downward sloping diagonal line marks the limit of possible responses. No candidate can be in the upper right (empty) triangle of the plot. The closer to the diagonal line from (0,100) to (100,0) a candidate gets, the fewer voters are undecided about them. Conversely, the more voters who lack an opinion about the candidate, the further from the diagonal, regardless of the balance of support and opposition among those with an opinion. Finally, there is a line from (0,0) to (50,50). Candidates above this line and to the upper left corner have more opposition than support. Candidates below this line and to the lower right corner have more support than opposition.

The first and most impressive result is that no Democrat is in the advantaged lower right part of the figure, while Republicans McCain and Giuliani both are. Of the Democrats, John Edwards comes closest, with Clinton and Obama a bit behind. (This poll was taken over a month before Edwards' announcement of candidacy in New Orleans last week, so this is not a reflection of his recent actions.) While Clinton is very close to the limiting diagonal, showing few people lack opinions about her, Edwards is a bit further away and Obama a bit more, neither of which is surprising. But given the publicity Clinton and Obama in particular have recently enjoyed, it is surprising that neither has more support for a run than opposition. Given Edwards' relatively low profile in the fall, it is more surprising that he has the most support for a run of the three.

McCain and Giuliani lead the Republican field by a wide margin, with both more support than opposition and relatively few voters lacking opinions about them. While Giuliani has lead McCain in most polls of Republican primary voters (30 of 39 polls as of late December) among the adult population McCain has a slight advantage on this question.

While trial heats are another measure of advantage, with potentially different results, this plot shows that Democrats have yet to field a candidate with the balance of support of either of the two Republican poll leaders.

Among Democrats, the "rest of the field" trails the top three by considerable margins. Gallup only asked about Gore and Kerry, neglecting several other common names. Neither fared well, with Gore and especially Kerry finding much more opposition than support. (We'll see other candidates from the Marist Poll below.)

Among Republicans, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came in third, though her repeated statements of non-candidacy make this a highly speculative rating in any case. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich trails the entire field of candidates in either party. Defeated Virginia Senator George Allen not surprisingly shows both little support and considerable lack of recognition. But Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is in nearly the same position. While no one expects Allen to make a run at this point, Romney clearly has considerable ground to make up. To his advantage, he can possibly convert lack of recognition into support, something better known candidates cannot do.

The Marist Poll data closely resembles the Gallup results. The figure below shows Marist results from 12/3/06, and adds data for Biden and Sharpton for the Dems and for Pataki and Bloomberg for the Reps.
























Marist has asked its question a number of times, so we can trace the dynamics of support for some candidates using their data collected at various times since December of 2004. Since Marist and Gallup closely agree in their latest polls, I assume these paths are not unique to the Marist poll. In these plots the arrows point from earlier to later polls, though the polls are not necessarily all equally separated in time.

First the Democrats. The clear story here is the stability of Clinton's support, some variability in Edwards, though ending rather strongly, and the steady collapse of support for Kerry. In addition, Al Gore has remained well back and rather stable.

























On the Republican side McCain follows the Clinton pattern of quite stable support. Giuliani on the other hand shows considerable growth in support over the last two years, from well back to parity with McCain. Rice is interesting simply because of the growth of support despite the decline in approval of President Bush and of many administration policies with with Rice might be identified. Gingrich has only been measured twice, and shows little movement.
























The dynamics may be quite different within party constituencies, so these results may not reflect changes in the nomination battles within the parties. But they do show that the Democratic candidates have some ground to make up, and that there is room for some dynamic change in both parties, as exemplified by Kerry'[s collapse and Giuliani's surge.

Campaign Dynamics for the Holidays

(Click the image for a full resolution version.)

I've had so much fun with the new oversize color laser printer that I felt the need to share another political graphic suitable for framing for the holidays. This one compares the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaign dynamics. I'll let you add your own commentary, suitable for either party.

An 11 x 17 version is available here for download (in .pdf format) for the political junkie on your shopping list. (If you lack a large color printer, I bet your local copy shop can print this for a modest fee.)