ianrandalstrock ([info]ianrandalstrock) wrote,
@ 2008-05-06 10:24:00
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Entry tags:politics

More on why the Democrats are in trouble no matter what they do
I'm a big fan of CNN's "Quick Vote"s. I know they're unscientific, using an entirely self-selected polling sample, but they still tend to give a feel for what the people who read the page care to express their opinions on (I still can't find the archive of these polls).

The current poll is "Democrats, what will you do if your candidate isn't the nominee?" The results as of right now (10:30AM EDT) are:
Not vote: 15% (7,390)
Vote for the nominee: 45% (22,888)
Vote for John McCain: 41% (20,686)
Total Votes: 50,964

It just bolsters the point I keep making: before they can seriously contend for the White House, the Democrats really need to figure out who they are and what they stand for (as opposed to against) as a Party.


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[info]den_down_unda
2008-05-06 03:23 pm UTC (link)
That must be why both Dems are ahead of McCain in national polls.

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[info]ianrandalstrock
2008-05-06 06:01 pm UTC (link)
Like I said, it's just one, non-scientific data point. But I find it interesting because it seems to point out a larger theme in this year's Democratic race: the two candidates have engendered such strong feelings among their supporters and detractors that it may be difficult for the Party to unify behind either of them.

Thanks for the link: it's an interesting site I'll have to dig through some more. Four things stuck out from the page you link to: 1) the differences between "registered voters" polls and "likely voters" polls; 2) that nearly all of the polls referenced show the races to be within four points, which is probably within the margin of error for all of them; 3) only the Ipsos poll shows Clinton 5 points ahead of McCain; 4) the CBS News/NYTimes outliers, giving the Democrats 11- and 12-point advantages, but that poll has the smallest sample size.

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[info]den_down_unda
2008-05-06 06:09 pm UTC (link)
I tend to distrust the nonscientific data point, because it's often just an example of a poll that was freeped (overrun by people following a link from a partisan site; the practice began with Free Republic; hence the name).

As far as the "difficulty in unifying," I'm not sure. Certainly, there's a pretty deep divide and it straddles core constituencies (blacks and women), but at the end of the day, either is preferable to John McCain. I don't like Hillary, and I'll be hard put to vote for her, but I'll take her over President McCain. (Admittedly, I'm a nonscientific data point, here.) If everything wraps up in June, registered Democrats have five months to forgive and focus on McCain.

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[info]ianrandalstrock
2008-05-07 12:45 am UTC (link)
Perhaps it's a little more scientific. In this article, CNN quotes exit polls that "a third of Clinton voters said they would pick McCain over Obama, while 17 percent said they would not vote at all." In North Carolina, the article claims, the numbers are 38% and 12%.

And while Al Gore says the race will be decided in June, Clinton has decided there are another 400 or so delegates at stake (Florida and Michigan), and she just may stick around—even if she loses big today—until the convention.

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[info]den_down_unda
2008-05-07 02:41 pm UTC (link)
She's still moving the bar, but her comments don't sound like someone who is hell bent for going until August. So maybe you're right, but I have a feeling Howard Dean will have the last word. In June.

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