On March 18, CNN/ORC released a poll which includes questions about how voters would vote for President in November 2016. Scroll down to question 22. Assuming Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, she beats most potential Republican nominees by at least 12 points, and in many cases 15 points. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.
Now if they were unbiased enough to have actually included a possible Green or Libertarian Party nominee, like Jill Stein perhaps, I wonder how that would have affected the numbers. There’s such discontent against both ruling parties right now, especially over the possibility of a Bush vs Clinton Dem/Repub race, that if the polling organization had included a minor party candidate, that candidate may have polled over 5%.
But unfortunately you won’t see that out of our nation’s excessively biased polling organizations.
Richard, Richard, Richard…a poll for the 2016 election taken in March of 2015?
C’mon, now…
I think a large majority of the voters know enough about Hillary Clinton, and also they know enough about the Republican Party, that this poll is meaningful, despite the long time until the election.
The Republican Party, thru its congressional members and its governors and its state legislators, has been acting in a certain way for the last 6 years. The party’s leading office-holders have been noted for their extreme hostility toward President Obama. That seems to be a stable situation. Even now we have former Vice-President Dick Cheney telling the world that Obama is the worst president in the history of the nation.
Penn and Teller had something to say about polls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wySaC_z12GY
How many New Age voters and non-voters are LYING to New Age MORON pollsters ???
See the recent Israel election poll stuff versus actual results.
Where is the poll question –
Do you want REAL Democracy via P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. ???
Jeff –
Thanks for the video. It bears out what Jimbo Riley has said many times in the past about various polling questions. And Jimbo is right. (Although he’s only batting one for everything else plus one, let’s give him credit.) The very fact that question 22 isolates Clinton against multiple individual hypothetical Republican candidates rather than either a single hypothetical candidate, or certainly a known post-nominating convention candidate, makes the polling suspect.
Although I agree with Richard’s assertions, I don’t agree that a poll taken now indicates that voting Americans will reflect the sentiments a year and a half from now. Clinton, I think, first needs to get nominated after all, and there can be little question that the political right will wage a full nuclear assault against her in the lead up to the general election if she is. If and when that happens, and given Richard’s statements in his response to my post above, I wonder if he will then rue his awkward support of unlimited and anonymous contributions to SuperPacs, because it will be THAT money that funds the attacks. Oh, I should say, shouldn’t I, attacks which are “uncoordinated” with her opponent’s campaigns, of course…
Also, we need to remember that polls are often purchased by news agencies or networks, as is the case here. Static poll results over time are not “news.” (“We have shocking new rolling results on…”). Polling is typically manipulated (as the P&T video shows) to engineer apparently “fluid” voter sentiment, all within the technical boundaries of “scientific” polling. So we can expect with some confidence that CNN will promote another poll in the future which predicts different likely results.
To which we all should say “Meh…”
I guess this might be the reason Hillary is getting beaten up so much recently about her emails. The media loves to make the presidential election into a sporting event and if she really is a slam dunk then taking a few shots at her may increase the publics’ interest if the race tightens. Gotta love the US media!
Casual –
The “vast right wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton claimed existed some twenty plus years ago, and got ridiculed for doing so, is and was…a vast right wing conspiracy…and it’s much, much better funded than it was back then.
Thank you very much, USSC and Citizens United.
And you’re right, the media – on BOTH ends of the spectrum do love the theater more than they do reporting facts. The latter sells better to their viewers. And if someone manages a “gotcha” in the “debates” (“I knew Jack Kennedy, and you’re no Jack Kennedy”) that’s what we’ll be hearing about for a week or more. That stuff sells as what we euphemistically call “news” these days. It’s very sad.
THE KEY THING to remember about polls is that they cost money to conduct. And the more reliable poll results desired, the more money that needs to be spent to survey a larger population group. Logically, anybody spending money on a poll would not want their competition to benefit from the knowledge gathered. The ONLY REASON to release poll results is thus to manipulate the masses. Food for thought.
The brain dead media LOVE having the LAWLESS MONARCHY stuff —
ZERO respect by them for public legislative bodies and mere laws.
Thus the brain dead media stuff about Obama changing all sorts of stuff regarding Obamacare, changing stuff about INVADERS aka illegal immigrants, etc. etc.
Attention brain dead media – one of these days, a killer Prez will show up and wipe out all media with any brain cells.
Think Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Saddam, etc.
Polls are only good within two weeks of an election.
Do you remember the American Express ads that William Miller did? It looks like Joe Biden might be able to do the same.
Miller’s was something like this, “Do you know me? I ran for Vice President of the United States in 1964…”
Biden’s will go something like this, “Do you know me? I ran Vice President of the United States in 2008 and 2012, and was elected. I am still Vice President and that’s a ing big deal …”
Biden is up to 11% “never heard of” among persons 18-34.
Liz Warren will speak and sign her book at B&N Union Square 17th st on Monday, March 30, 7p.