None of the Above
A new Rasmussen Reports polls shows that most voters hold an unfavorable opinion about all the presidential candidates.
Ed Morrissey links to this poll at Rasmussen Reports which shows that all, and I mean all, of the presidential candidates are viewed unfavorably by American voters.
All in all, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney have “the highest level of core opposition among voters.” 47% of all American voters say they’ll vote against either, “no matter who else is on the ballot.”
Those are bad numbers, but one has to keep in mind that an incredibly high percentage of voters indicated in the past that they would vote against Romney simply because he’s a Mormon. This means that 47% is bad, yes, but if he were, say, a Baptist, that number would be much lower. As such, he’s less devisive than Clinton.
What’s more, none of the candidates has to convince 60% of the American people to vote for him or her. 51% is good enough (sometimes even less as we saw in 2000). Also: the US is, it seems, very divided among partisan and cultural lines.
Back to the poll. The poll is actually good news for… John McCain. McCain has the lowest negative numbers of each of the candidates. “Just 33% say they will vote against him.”
As I’ve argued for a while now, if Republicans want to nominate someone who can reach out to many independent and moderate voters they should vote for McCain. He’s a safe choice. For a long time people have argued that Rudy Giuliani is such a safe choice, but I disagree. If this website is an indication many moderates, centrists and independents don’t trust him: he’s too authoritarian, has too many skeletons in his closet, he’s too hawkish… and quite some simply don’t trust him.
The poll shows that my hunch was right: his negatives aren’t that different from Romney’s and Clinton’s. All in all, 42% of voters say they’ll never vote for the former mayor of New York.
On the Democratic side, Barack Obama is the safe choice: 36% of Americans say they’ll never vote for him.
Having said that, although Clinton’s negatives are high, she’s “also on top” with regards to core support. “Thirty percent (30%) will definitely vote for her and 29% will definitely vote for Obama. Edwards and Giuliani have core support from 23%, McCain from 22%, Thompson and Huckabee from 21%, and Romney from 19%.”
From a polling perspective, then, the Democrats would be wise to nominate Obama (with a slight edge), while the Republicans should elect McCain.*
Will polls like this play a role in the coming weeks? My guess is yes. Especially among Republicans one often hears people talking about electability. McCain should use these numbers in his advantage. Cite them whenever and wherever you can, I’d say.
And among Democrats? I don’t know. The poll shows that Clinton is indeed unpopular but it also shows that she can most certainly win national elections. Again, she doesn’t need to win the support of more than 51% of Americans. She can do with the bare minimum. Having said that, it most certainly reinforces the argument Obama has tried to make: that he’s far more electable than his closest competitor.
More opinions at Memeorandum.
*Obviously, that should not be the only concern of voters.
The fact that your two favored candidates are the two with the highest negatives helps explain why I think you’ve overestimated their chances. I think gauging those negative opinions is hard, and perhaps neither the polling data or the sense that I get are correct, but my hunch is that it’s true that the candidates with the highest negatives really will have a problem because they’ll drive up turnout for the opposition. You’re right, of course, that the winning candidate doesn’t even need 51% of the vote. But still, even a lower number is hard to get if your presence in the race tends to spur more people to come out to vote against you. You have a much harder fight to get enough supporters to the polls- you have to make sure you have the people who support you as motivated to vote for you as the people who oppose you are motivated to vote against you. IOW, you not only need a lot of supporters but you need enough of them who are passionately supporting you to neutralize the passion that’s working against you.
I agree that Romney’s numbers could be looked at as not that bad, considering he’s fighting the anti-Mormon bigotry. Same could be said, even more so, for Obama- although I don’t support him, I’m pleased that racism isn’t causing a larger number to have a kneejerk opposition to him.
According to the poll, Clinton has that. And what do you think will happen if Romney becomes the Republican nominee?
I predict that they’ll rally behind him and that he’ll have a good shot at winning the national elections. Especially if Clinton is the Democratic nominee.
No, the same cannot be said. I’ll try to find the polls about this, but if I remember correctly some 40% of voters said they would never vote for a Mormon, whereas only some 10% said that about a black.
Christine, here’s a poll (also about Clinton):
- "40% of registered voters said most people they know would not vote for a female presidential candidate"
- "compared with 25% for a black candidate"
- "41% for a Mormon candidate"
In other words: assuming the poll to be reasonably correct (and I think that when dealing with subjects like this, it’s perhaps saver to rely on "would the other person vote for a woman" than "would you?"), the odds are far greater for Clinton and Romney than for Obama.
I think that if Romney was a Baptist his negatives could be quite less.
This poll, by the way, has some less bad numbers, but they still underline why Romney and Clinton have higher negatives than the other candidates:
"A new Gallup Poll finds that better than one in six Americans, including similar numbers of Republicans and Democrats, indicate they would not support their party’s nominee for president if that person were a Mormon."
"The percentage of Republicans who now rule out voting for a Mormon, 18%, is just one point lower than it was in March."
"Four percent of Americans (including 3% of Republicans) say they would not vote for a Catholic, 5% would not vote for a black, 12% would not vote for a woman, and 12% would not vote for a Hispanic."
I think many in the party will rally around Romney but I’m not sure it will be enough because some won’t do so, and some people who identify as conservatives but not Republicans will just stay home (some evangelicals who won’t vote for a Mormon, or some independents who just aren’t very politically active and don’t care very much one way or another.)
On the issue of Romney’s religion and Obama’s race- I was only making the comparison because it’s the same concept (because each candidate has to overcome bigotry in one way or another.) I wasn’t trying to say that the bigotry in each instance is of equal magnitude- in fact my point is that I’m glad to see that it’s probably not as large as some people think when it comes to a black candidate.
I think that if the polls prove one thing, it’s that racism and bigotry with regards to blacks really has disappeared – at least politically. Prejudices may still exist, but that’s not the same as racism.
You mention only 4 candidates. Shoddy job even for someone who is only reporting via a quick Google news search. You totally miss the candidates on both the Democratic and Republican sides who are actually positioned to win the Iowa caucuses.
Lazy, misleading and totally out of touch with reality.
Iowa: Clinton and Obama – mentioned
Iowa: Romney and Huckabee – only mentioned Romney because this post isn’t about Iowa.
Ah, yes, shoddy reporting indeed.
Now, go back to googling the name of your candidate, perhaps others wrote about him.
Read: You didn’t say anything about Ron Paul! You’re a zombie in the hands of the MSM!!!
Lynx: yeah. I’m guessing that 2% in the polls means that Paul has a good shot at winning Iowa!
Hilarious though.
As of a few days ago I read many reports that said Ron Paul was virtually in a statistical tie for 3rd place in Iowa. I don’t think Ron Paul will win Iowa by any means. But I really do believe that he’ll, almost everywhere, get more votes than the polls are predicting. If what I’ve heard is factually correct, the policy of most polling organizations is to call people that voted in the 2004 primary (aka Bush supporters). If they are really polling to such a base, I think it’s very possible that Ron Paul could be marginally underrepresented. I also think that, as you can see by how fanatic his supporters are, they are more likely to vote than supporters of other republican candidates (the idea of ‘none of the above’ only furthers that idea) I think he will get third place in Iowa – and that would at least give him some momentum going into New Hampshire. He most likely won’t win, but never say never. He has done much good in succeeding to get a message out to the American people. Personally, Paul has inspired me because he straightened out my thoughts. Ron Paul makes it OK in the minds of many to hate our current government. You don’t have to feel bad if you think we are the bad guys – instead you should fight. That’s going to be Ron Paul’s legacy, most likely.
One problem with polls is that they are not just a mere observation of what people want, they also let people know which votes are a waste and which ones are not. If you would have fake polls broadcast for a few weeks saying Ron Paul was the overwhelming frontrunner, it’d be interesting to see what happened to his ‘real’ numbers.
I am also one of those Americans that would choose ‘none of the above.’ I would vote for Dr. Paul, but out of the mainstream likely nominees, I really don’t like them too much. I think if I had to choose from them I would choose Obama. I get the impression his foreign policy wouldn’t be as aggressive as we’ve had. I am completely convinced Guliani’s views border on fascism, and that’s not to be dramatic. I don’t want a guy whose only issue is ‘they’re gonna attack us.’ Romney said he’d want to double gtmo bay. Clinton is about as artificial as they come, and anyone with sense knows almost every movement of hers is perfectly crafted by people behind the scenes.
I get the feeling most of these people are careerists without a real vision for the country. That’s the reason I support Ron Paul, because I believe he is the only person that wants to take the country somewhere and doesn’t just want the power. He is also not perfect, and I do believe the mainstream media fears he would shake the establishment too much. Media is a business, and taking someone like Ron Paul serious has to be a gradual process. If you piss too many people off you lose viewers and advertisers. The government has its hand too much in media and our press freedom has gone way down – but not to the point where it’s all a massive conspiracy designed to prolong fascism. There are genuine criticisms of American media but people that go all the way and say it’s a vast conspiracy only hurt the cause of a free press.
Back to the mainstream candidates… McCain is a military man, and that’s the last thing I want for this country. I’ll say it again though, we are spending way too much and selling our country to the global community via deficit spending. Increasing the size of government is not the answer. But if I were to vote on a mainstream candidate I’d pick Obama, even though I consider myself a libertarian.
I think the reason for ‘none of the above’ is that people are deeply unhappy with the direction of this country, but anyone bold enough to fix the real problems will be seen as a radical. America shouldn’t be imposing ideas on anyone through force or taking part in any occupation. That goes against the entire concept of the reason the country was founded. America causes more harm than good and is really headed towards fascism. I want this nightmare to end. I am thankful to many of the European countries for providing at least a mild opposition to the American stance. That holds some weight and without Germany and France opposing the Iraq war, the west would be much much more militant than it is now. By the way I enjoy reading this site. It’s dutch, right? In my internet experiences I have always found the dutch to have very interesting opinions.
Jim, first let me thank you for your thoughtful comment. We obviously disagree, but you explain your position in a good way.
I’m Dutch, one assistant editor is Dutch as well (living in Canada), all the other contributors are Americans… but thanks for the compliment.
this will be my first time to vote…as i read all comments it was more confusing to me listening to different kinds of words of war from every body, but at least it gives me some idea how to assess for a better candidate. I welcome some suggestions and corrections. I definitely will not look at a candidates religion , or his personality , I will not look on his financial status or all the kinds/strategies of their campaign, not look on the gender, not look on color of skin. But I will look at the person’s life accomplishment , experiences , moral reputation, education , vision to america , plans to do and how will he do it. Would it be Romney??? I thinks he is the best among the candidate when it comes with records and reputation..coz I think a person can be a good leader i he leads a good family life? Right?
NO more Clinton dynasty and corrupted Health Industry.
!!! VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA !!!
Michael van der Galien December 23, 2007 @ 3:55 pm CETLynx: yeah. I’m guessing that 2% in the polls means that Paul has a good shot at winning Iowa! Hilarious though.
Ron Paul has won more than the majority of the straw polls across the nation. Telephone polling which doesn’t include cell only based people, people who didnt vote for Bush, people who never voted before, people who are sick of politics as usual and the status quo, independents or the fact that they dont even mention Ron Paul in the polls. FYI, Ron Paul is now 10% in Iowa according to your biased polls, which puts him into position for third, granted he will get first, but even third is victory before the New HampshirePrimary. Check out the AOL Straw Poll, it mirrors the telephone polling for both GOP and Democrats, with one exception, Ron Paul, and it is spam proof by limiting one vote per IP address. You can see people winning block votes like Romey in Utah and Massachuettes and Giuliani in New York, but Ron Paul wins by a landslide.