The nominating conventions, when the Democratic and Republican parties will pick their general election candidates, are more than 15 months away. This far out, polls are generally not worth wasting pixels on. But NPR readers had a good question for their Ombudsman: “Why are the single digit also-rans in the Republican Party being treated with more respect than Sen. Bernie Sanders who is pulling in 15% in the Democratic Party primary polls?”
Here is a recent Q-Poll (May 28th):
If the Democratic primary for President were being held today, and the candidates were Joe Biden, Lincoln Chafee, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Jim Webb, for whom would you vote?
Clinton 57%, Sanders 15%, Biden 9%, Chafee 1%, O’Malley 1%, Webb 1%, Someone Else 1%, Wouldn’t Vote 2%, Don’t Know 14%
If the Republican primary for President were being held today, and the candidates were Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Donald Trump, and Scott Walker, for whom would you vote?
Bush 10%, Carson 10, Huckabee 10, Rubio 10, Walker 10, Paul 7, Cruz 6, Trump 5, Christie 4, Fiorina 2, Kasich 2, Graham 1, Jindal 1, Perry 1, Pataki -, Santorum -, Someone Else -, Wouldn’t Vote 1, Don’t Know 20
The bigger question is whether any of these candidates can win a primary. Paul? I doubt it. Cruz? No way. Christie or Trump? HAHAHAHAHA!
Here is what NPR said, by the way:
Michael Oreskes, NPR’s editorial director and senior vice president for news, in a letter to the Columbia Journalism Review editors that he shared with me, wrote, “we do not use polling to allocate coverage,” adding: “Even mildly experienced political journalists and their editors understand that polls at this stage capture little more than name recognition.”
The bigger challenge, he wrote, “is what I’d call the paradigm problem,” that is, when “We get a certain paradigm in our heads. A conventional wisdom. Someone is a front runner, someone else a long shot. We develop this paradigm from a witches’ brew of polling, money, instinct and the ineffable judgments of the chattering classes of political ‘experts.’ ” The only antidote, he added, “is reporting.”
… going forward, as the campaign coverage gears up, I do hope that NPR will back off on what seems to me to be the overuse of dismissive terms, such as “long-shot,” to describe Sanders, or any of the multitude of presidential candidates, whatever their party affiliation.
As Oreskes wrote elsewhere in his letter: “Political journalists should not try to pick winners and losers. That’s the job of voters. Predicting the outcome of elections isn’t really very interesting and we aren’t any good at it anyway.“
Exactly! Leave that up to Karl Rove and his “special math” …
Pssst, Karl!!!
Hay! Horse race polls are fun!! But, not to be a nag, the only poll that matters the one on November 8, 2016.
Nice pun!!!!
To those who focus on these early polls, just say neigh!
I say groan!
Straw Poll from Democratic Party of Wisconsin convention:
“Clinton 49%, Sanders 41%”
Very pleased to see Sanders doing so well. Am amazed in Walker country.
We have a lot of liberals in Wisconsin. They just can’t be bothered to vote in mid-term elections. I was sure that after they saw what happened when they stayed home in 2010 that they would flock to the polls in 2014. Nope. Now not only do we have Walker for 4 more years but he is out on the campaign trail embarrassing our state every day. I take solace in the fact that he is actually a religious nut, home schooled and born in Iowa and has no understanding of Wisconsin values. You learn them in our public schools and walking in our beautiful parks not by sitting in the pews on Sunday listening to how awful Those People are.
Chris Christie is still mulling over a run and “might make a decision this month”. If he has any honest advisers, he will be told that he can’t overcome the “will never vote for Chris Christie” numbers … somewhere in the range of 60% of primary voters. He would certainly have to skip Iowa and put all of his eggs in the New Hampshire basket (Iowa wants a fundie). I think he is one who is clearly running to get a Fox News gig. He has the perfect personality for it: undeterred by facts, anger management problems, hates liberals. It could be called “Christie Screaming” and open with clips of him yelling at the teacher.