« If only, Bill, if only | Main | GNW Pick: Only in San Francisco… »
December 21, 2007
The electability factor
Posted by: Chris
In a rare direct jab at a rival, Barack Obama has questioned Hillary Clinton's oft-repeated claim to be the most electable candidate, a big factor in Iowa that probably turned the state for John Kerry four years ago:
“I’m not going to mention names, but I mean the notion that a viability or an electability argument is being made by somebody who starts off with almost half the country not being able to vote for them doesn’t make sense,” the Illinois senator told a Portsmouth audience, according to a report in Foster’s Daily Democrat.
“For whatever reason I keep on defying this notion that somehow the American people are not ready for me. That just is not borne out,” he said.
Then, a new Zogby Poll bore that out, showing Obama as the only candidate beating all five of the top Republicans:
Obama (D) 53%, Romney (R) 35%
Obama (D) 47%, Huckabee (R) 42%
Obama (D) 48%, Giuliani (R) 39%
Obama (D) 47%, McCain (R) 43%
Obama (D) 52%, Thompson (R) 36%Clinton (D) 46%, Romney (R) 44%
Huckabee (R) 48%, Clinton (D) 43%
Giuliani (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 42%
McCain (R) 49%, Clinton (D) 42%
Clinton (D) 48%, Thompson (R) 42%Edwards (D) 50%, Romney (R) 38%
Edwards (D) 47%, Huckabee (R) 41%
Giuliani (R) 45%, Edwards (D) 44%
McCain (R) 46%, Edwards (D) 42%
Edwards (D) 51%, Thompson (R) 35%
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834527dd469e200e54fc0162b8834
Comments
-
At the same time, the person who wins the Presidency of the United States may not be the one who got the most votes, either!
-
may not be the one who got the most votes, either!
The comments to this entry are closed.
Andoni on Dec 21, 2007 3:46:46 PM:
The problem with the Democratic Primaries is that for the most part only Democrats are voting (except for NH). And those partisans who vote never seem to get the big picture right on who the overall best candidate is to put up against the Republican in to win. They have no idea which candidate can successfully woo the independents and the few Republicans who may have had it with the Bush/Cheney/Rove antics and win.
It is extremely hard to elect a Democratic president only with Democrats because they don’t have a majority in the country. To win, you need to get independent and some Republican votes. Poll after poll shows that Obama can do this best and Edwards second best. But in the end, I bet the Dems go with Clinton. Change is so very, very difficult.
If I were advising the Obama campaign, if those numbers you show hold, I would saturate the airwaves with those results showing he can beat every Repub and the others can’t. If the Dems can’t see that, they deserve to lose.
Another thing that bothers me is that the Iowa Caucuses are NOT democratic (small d). The person with the most votes can actually lose. A precinct in a rural area where only 25 people show up to vote gets as much weight as a city precinct where 2500 people show. It’s sort of like the Senate where each state gets 2 Senators (and 2 votes) whether they represent 30 million people or 500,000.
So it’s possible that one candidate gets catapulted out of Iowa because the news headlines say the won, may in fact have received significantly less votes than another candidate who will be said to have lost. Those are the rules. But the person “winning” Iowa gets such a boost, that you wonder if this is a good way to select a president? Do most people know that the person who wins Iowa may not be one who got the most votes?