No apparent ‘Wright effect’ in new NBC/WSJ poll
The conventional wisdom held that the recent controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright would help drag one Democratic presidential hopeful down, at least a little while helping push the other up. As it turns out, according to a new poll from NBC News/Wall Street Journal, that’s exactly what happened — though the candidate that was supposed to go down went up.
The racially charged debate over Barack Obama’s relationship with his longtime pastor hasn’t much changed his close contest against Hillary Clinton, or hurt him against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC polls with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, called the latest poll a “myth-buster” that showed the pastor controversy is “not the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign.”
But both Democrats, and especially New York’s Sen. Clinton, are showing wounds from their prolonged and increasingly bitter nomination contest, which could weaken the ultimate nominee for the general-election showdown against Sen. McCain of Arizona. Even among women, who are the base of Sen. Clinton’s support, she now is viewed negatively by more voters than positively for the first time in a Journal/NBC poll.
Indeed, the poll results aren’t encouraging for the Clinton camp. While she had a four-point lead over Obama among Dems two weeks ago, she and Obama are now tied at 45%. In hypothetical general-election match-ups, Obama now leads McCain by two (44% to 42%), while McCain leads Clinton by two (46% to 44%). The Wright controversy was supposed to drive white Dems to Clinton in larger numbers, but her margin actually shrank in recent weeks, from 12 points to eight.
But it’s the personal impressions of Clinton that should be of the greatest concern. It appears, based on the data, that the tone of the nominating fight is taking its toll.
The negativity of the Obama-Clinton contest seems to be hurting Sen. Clinton more, the poll shows. A 52% majority of all voters says she doesn’t have the background or values they identify with. By comparison, 39% say that of Sen. Obama, and 32% of Sen. McCain.
Also, fewer voters hold positive views of Sen. Clinton than did so just two weeks ago in the Journal/NBC poll. Among all voters, 48% have negative feelings toward her and 37% positive, a decline from a net positive 45% to 43% rating in early March. While 51% of African-American voters have positive views, that is down 12 points from earlier this month, before the Wright controversy.
More ominous for Sen. Clinton is the net-negative rating she drew for the first time from women, one of the groups where she has drawn most support. In this latest poll, women voters with negative views narrowly outstrip those with positive ones, 44% to 42%. That compares with her positive rating from 51% of women in the earlier March poll.
Both she and Sen. Obama showed five-point declines in positive ratings from white voters. But where she is viewed mostly negatively, by 51% to 34% of whites, Sen. Obama’s gets a net positive rating, by 42% to 37%. Among all voters, he maintained a significant positive-to-negative score of 49% to 32% — similar to Sen. McCain’s 45% to 25%.
This isn’t entirely unexpected. As a rule, when one candidate is perceived as going negative, invariably that candidate’s favorable ratings decline. The trick of it is, that person’s target is supposed to go down, too. Otherwise, there’d never be any point to going negative in the first place.
Except, if the NBC/WSJ numbers are accurate, it appears Clinton’s criticisms of Obama aren’t having the desired effect at all.
What’s more, Chuck Todd noted, “[A]mong Obama voters, Clinton has a net-negative personal rating (35-43) while Clinton voters have a net-positive view of Obama (50-29). Taken together, this appears to be evidence that Obama, initially, should have the easier time uniting the party than Clinton.” I suspect those are numbers that will be of interest to superdelegates.
The poll wasn’t all good news for Obama. In the wake of the Wright controversy, Obama’s numbers among Republicans have fallen off, but he’s making up for it with support from independents.
Post Script: Just as an aside, there’s been talk that the poll intentionally “oversampled African-Americans,” which in turn makes the results less reliable. In this case, that interpretation appears mistaken: “What I think he means is this: In order to get a statistically reliable subset of African-American voters, they over-sampled this category. (Remember, African-Americans account for only about 13% of the US population. So that subset of a regular poll doesn’t really have a large enough sample to ensure a low margin of error.) They then re-weighted these results to come up with topline (everybody put together) numbers that adjusted for that oversampling.”
Update: As expected, the pollster explains the over-sampling and it’s just as JMM expected.
Gosh, I bet Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh are really pissed. It’s almost as if nobody is listening to them. I mean, if no one believes the hype anymore, what are the “journalists” supposed to do?
Well I guess Ol’Tonya needs to keep swinging for the kneecaps.
I followed the link to TPM about his interpretation of the oversampling
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/185845.php
He clearly says that he does not know for sure that they actually adjusted for that oversampling, which m akes this his best guess, because he couldn’t imagine that the MSM, especially the Wall Street Journal owned by Rupert Muroch, would intentionally skew the numbers.
I think that some clarification is needed.
It is unfortunate but predictable that both Democrats are experiencing some damage relative to McCain. On the other hand, it is still a long way until November, and McCain is unlikely to be a good candidate once the ‘horse race’ focus of the mainstream media shifts from Dem vs Dem to Dem vs Republican. Also, this is likely to raise the angst level among the superdelegates, which is probably a good thing at this point, given where Clinton is taking the campaign
I find the McCain negatives really bizarre. You have record numbers of people voting in Dem primaries, presumably because they hate the direction the nation is going. They don’t run out to vote for a different Rep, they vote Dem. Even with the favorable spin the press gives McCain, there was a lot of negative talk while the primaries were going on, and you have the think people at least realize that Republicans act as a unit, which discounts the concept of a maverick. But even if you think McCain is more independent, he has promised over and over and over to be more like the 28%ers. I think the lesson to take away from this is don’t trust these polls too much.
This proves my suspicions on Rasmussen’s polls, as Rasmussen tends to deviate more from the others, the key is the issue of Likely voters, Registered voters and Obama support, since Obama is stronger in Minorities and Young voters, as opposed to older white voters he tends to do worse in polls that focus on Likely voters, and better in Registered voter samples
Who came up with the Harding line? It’s pretty good. Can we call Mark Penn Galooley?
Here’s MSNBC’s conclusion:
What is Reid up to with the
superdelegatesex officio delegates? or is that just an empty rumor or Reid with his head up his ass again?I had already decided that anyone who continued to flog that phony Wright meme in the face of all the evidence of just how maliciously phony is it was worthy of the same treatment they professed to want for Wright - they should be declared unworthy of any further contact with the human race. Still I was surprised when Ms. Clinton picked it up - as low as my opinion of her has sunk since she annouced that she’s gonna start throwing kitchen sinks around, I didn’t think that she would sink this low.
Imagine my surprise when I saw the pictures of her sitting across the table from her nemesis, Richard Mellon Scaife, at the location where she publicly decided to take the lowest road available to her - it’s clear that she’s made some sort of Faustian bargain, at least with herself, to win something that she has already lost. What do you gain, Hillary, when you achieve worldly power and lose your own soul?
I’m definitely not surprised, but definitely heartened, to see the results of these polls - More and more Americans are throwing off the blinders and recognizing how thoroughly we have been manipulated all these years. We’re mostly seeing the depths of depravity to which Publicans have sunk to achieve and hold their grip on power. And we are repulsed and disgusted when we see anyone who professes to be a Democrat take up the same tactics.
I think once the general public sees McCain debating himself* the Democrats will shine by comparison (unless somehow Tonya Harding manages to kneecap her opponent, who so far has been floating like a butterfly as she swings madly).
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI
the wright controversy netting out as a tempest in a teapot for obama may reflect what i suspected at the outset: that folks who don’t attend religious services are the only ones that agree with their religious leaders 100% of the time
yup .. i’d say one hillary leaves the race and the voters get to make a choice between shiny and new and old and worn out .. not just in physical terms ..but in the market place if ideas .. it’ll be “good-by john.. six white horses … “
But … but … Greg and Mary and the other Clintonistas told me that this was going to doom Obama — and I mean DOOM!! DOOM!!! DOOM!!!! him in the general.
You mean that this whole Wright issue was nothing but a truckload of utter horses*** not relative to anything important in determining a President?
You mean they were **gasp** wrong?!
**goes to find fainting couch**
I would add some caveats to the polling (from swimming freestyle):
” * The margin of error shouldn’t be ignored. Obama’s decline in positive ratings (and uptick in negative ratings) is within the margin of the sample and, therefore, statistically insignificant.
* 31% of those polled didn’t see Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech? I would argue those folks aren’t paying a lick of attention to the primary battle and cast doubt on their poll responses.
* Both of the match-ups (Obama/McCain and Clinton/McCain) are within the 3.7% margin of error. Once again, statistically insignificant difference. Bottom line: everything’s tied up.
* Re: Democrats voting for McCain if their candidate isn’t the nominee. I don’t buy it. Come November, when those Democrats go into the voting booth and have to choose a Democrat or McCain, they won’t vote for McCain. It sounds good and defiant now, but it’s just not gonna happen.” (http://swimmingfreestyle.typepad.com)
Is it just me, or does it seem more problematic to be caught in an outright lie than to attend a church where a pastor made some inflamatory statements?
For my money, knowing Clinton blatently lied about her Bosnia experience (and her subsequent attempts to characterize it as an honest mistatement) says more about the kind of POTUS she’d be than what Reverend Wright’s statement say about the kind of POTUS Obama would be (especially in light of Obama’s response/speech on the matter).
This really isn’t too surprising, seeing as how this is what happens to Hillary every time she goes negative. This whole primary season she’s had a bi-polar campaign: She’s positive and loses to Obama, tries to fix that by going negative which hurts her slightly more, which makes her go positive again and still lose, and repeat.
I think a problem is that when her campaign goes negative, they think they’re walking some fine line, when they’re really going waaaay too far. And the big problem is that they still haven’t gotten used to the idea that things are different in a Democratic primary than when fighting against Republicans. Obama isn’t Gingrich, and where they should be lightly tapping the guy, they instead go overboard and start telling people how McCain is better than Obama and all kinds of crazy stuff that is waaaay too far.
And this ties into that Hillary never believed she’d be in a primary fight, hadn’t positioned herself to have to fight against a Democrat, and keeps having to make this stuff up as she goes along. Just like with Bush in Iraq, there was no Plan B, as they imagined it’d be a cakewalk the whole way.
This same poll, when they asked ONLY DEMOCRATS which they would prefer if the democratic primary were being held today, they are evenly split at 45% each.
FYI, Matt Lauer The Today Show did very brief story on Obama’s church again this morning in it’s first segment. In response, I sent the following e-mail to today@msnbc.com –
This six-degrees of separation game that the media plays whenever they want to damage a candidate has to end, and the only way we can think of to do it is to abandon the corporate media’s shows that don’t live up to minimal standards of fairness and decency. My wife and I are also open to other suggestions.
My wife and I are also open to other suggestions.
As tempting a target as that is for a ribald response, I’ll be serious here with my suggestions:
1) Cancel your cable subscription if you have one
2) Buy a pair of rabbit ears for those rare instances when something good is on
3) Use your TV to watch movies from your DVD player
4) Go online or read books for your information
You won’t miss TV. Trust me.
Thanks Lindsay!