Chris Bowers of MyDD jump-started some of my thinking on whether or not Hillary vs. Obama poll numbers have any inherent biases built into them, but Mark Blumenthal ends that discussion here with some smart analysis that suggests there is no difference between national surveys of so-called Dem primary voters.
Bowers postulated that the screens were not tight enough and Hillary had a name ID advantage that was explaining her lead. I believed some version of that for a while as well, but those numbers suggest to me that something very different is happening in the Democratic primary race.
Look at the chart Blumenthal produces:
That Mark Mellman poll piqued my interest.
One of the reason we hacks so trust our pollsters is they use better methods than the (cheap) traditional media outlets use. Mellman’s poll uses a registration-based screen with voter history as a leading indicator of primary participation. Translated into English: He bought a voter file and called people who vote in primaries. That’s significantly more expensive to do, but provides much more valuable information.
So, here’s your resident Dem hack’s analysis of those numbers.
Hillary Clinton has a big-time base of support. She has 38% of the electorate — an electorate that is closely watching this race so far and has not decided to leave her. Edwards and Obama both have 77% name ID in this poll to Clinton’s 96%. That’s low, but couldn’t possibly account for her entire lead, and let me quibble with one point of analysis from their own page:
…Obama and Edwards are more popular among Democratic primary voters who know them.
Yeah, no shit. Your supporters tend to know who you are. It’s a common misconception in polling analysis that the uniformed portion of a poll acts like the informed portion.
Either way, I would think the Obama and Edwards teams need to face a hard fact: primary Dems know Hillary and they’re sticking with her right now. They will need to start identifying ways to peel off those voters if they want to win.
38% of the vote in a six-way primary is a massive amount of support and I won’t even get into an analysis of HRC’s favorables in this poll (they’re good) because it would take me another three paragraphs I don’t feel like writing that much.
But… HRC hasn’t locked this up by any means. It’s significant that 62% of Dems choose someone else and when there are fewer candidates to choose from, they’ll undoubtedly consolidate.
But the media don’t report like that; they only crown winners. In a front-loaded primary, people who look like they’re going to win generally get votes. It won’t be hard for HRC to start rolling through if she can emerge from IA, NH, NV, SC with a couple wins.
That makes those states do or die for Edwards and Obama. They need to shake up Hillary’s base.
Don Ho, the legendary Hawaiian crooner died of heart failure Saturday morning. Unfortunately not so many people heard the sad news because nobody in the media dared say his last name anymore.
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Let me get this straight: Don Imus drops a comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team being a bunch of “nappy-headed ho’s,” and the mediasphere goes berzerk. But nappy-headed Hawaiin icon Don Ho dies, and you can almost hear crickets chirping out there. Coincidence or conspiracy? Discuss.
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Probably Elizabeth or: Comment Registration Makes Good Neighbors
Since last week, D.G. Hall (née Joe Tobacco) of Cadillac Tight has been trying to nail down the identities of a couple of interesting commenters on his blog, who abruptly appeared this past week, then just as abruptly left. And you probably already know exactly who one of them is.
If nothing else, it was an off-message moment for John Edwards’ campaign and for Elizabeth (or as we like to call her, EE) as well.
Hall noticed the story and posted an excerpt, “wondering” why the leftosphere hadn’t noticed this. On which post, of all people, EE (or someone purporting to be her) left a comment advancing her side of the story:
Hall welcomed her to the site and asked for confirmation that she really said of Johnson, “I wouldn’t be nice to him, anyway.” The following morning, EE responded once more:
To which another commenter asked:
EE didn’t return, and as of Friday afternoon, that was that. Until yesterday, that is, when the same post received a comment from one Ronda Johnson, claiming to be the daughter of old man Johnson:
There’s something curious about the fact that every single one of Ms. Johnson’s sentences ends with an exclamation point! It doesn’t exactly come across as a sign of sincerity! Nor does the “silky pony” reference! But you never know, maybe Ronda Johnson reads blogs! After all, Elizabeth Edwards does!
Plus, there is a Ronda Johnson listed (Google her name, or call their new 411 service) as living in Raleigh. Same h-less spelling, too. Hall tried calling it, but couldn’t get an answer.
Hall had also matched EE’s e-mail address to other plausible EE registrations, such as one at My Left Wing. The address (Hall says the account is bouncing now) is probablyElizabeth at johnedwards.com, perhaps mischievously, suggesting the user knew other blog readers would question its provenance. Plus, being a minor scholar of EE’s blogospheric participaticipation, I’d say it certainly sounds like her.
As Hall graciously notes in his wrap-up post, he contacted me and I lived up to the name of this blog by matching the IP addresses to the possible commenters’ probable locations. As he puts it:
That sounds about right. Could be both, maybe even neither — but it’s probably at least one of them (EE), and someone who knows the other one (RJ). If all is as it seems, an AP story reporting some offhand comments fueled a lingering resentment between two neighboring families, subsequently breaking out into the comment section of an interested but uninvolved blogger.
Heck, they’re practically the Montagues and Capulets of the Research Triangle. Sort of not really. But just think of how it’ll play at the next PTA night.
Bonus observation! Fifteen years ago, there wasn’t a blogosphere to hash out neighborly disputes like this one. But they did have something arguably better.