Hillary Clinton Exceeds Records Set By Her Husband Against Republicans In 2016, Says New CNN Poll

Hillary Clinton laughs with ex-Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta. A recent CNN/ORC poll certainly gives her plenty reason to smile. Photo courtesy of Win McNamee/Getty Images

Still shaking off the sting of November's thumping, a recent CNN/ORC poll provided Democrats with some glimmers of hope. While most of the headlines generated by the poll were concerned with Obama's sudden surge in job approval, there was another eye-brow raising statistic in the release - Hillary Clinton positively dominates the entire 2016 Republican field, at a time when news of Jeb Bush's unofficial campaign launch has sucked up much of the media oxygen in the room.

So how does the recently much-hyped junior Bush stack up against the recently quiet ex-Secretary of State? Very poorly, actually.

If the election were held today, Hillary would win a clear majority of the vote (54%), while Jeb Bush just barely cross the 40% mark. Supposing the margin between the candidates holds, it would be the worst popular vote performance for Republicans in a Presidential election since Barry Goldwater's landslide 1964 loss.

And if Jeb Bush is not the Republican nominee, and you're a Republican voter, well...go ahead and bend over, per CNN, because 2016 is going to be a rough ride.

The tough-talking New Jerseyan, who most think is a shoe-in to run, trails Hillary by an embarrassing 56-39% margin. Candidates as diverse as Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz, all trail ex-Sen. Clinton by 20 points or more. Hillary even hits 60% in a head-to-head against Sen. Cruz.

If you buy the CNN/ORC numbers, Hillary's performance against all of these candidates is truly intimidating. Not only does she match her ex-two-term President husband's 1990s performance in many demographic metrics, she actually exceeds his showing in many more. Consider the table below, which documents the demographics in which Hillary Clinton performs exceptionally strong in the CNN poll, and compares her performance with past Democratic nominees for President dating back to 1972 (the beginning of the modern exit polling era). 

Exit Poll data courtesy of Best & Krueger's Exit Polls.

Clinton's performance against Jeb Bush among men, women, Democrats, and Independents, is the best performance for any Democratic presidential nominee since at least as far back as national exit polls track (1972). In other words, Hillary Clinton outperforms EVERY Democrat dating back to McGovern, in key demographics tested by the CNN/ORC poll. For example, she's up four among men, a feat not yet accomplished by any Democrat in exit polling to date. Only Bill Clinton came close to such an accomplishment when he carried the male vote by 3 points in 1992. But even then, that election is not directly comparable due to the unique strength of third-party candidate Ross Perot.

SHUTDOWN 2013: A Close Look At Public Opinion Towards The President, The Parties, Congress, and More

Congress, the President, Democrats, Republicans...EVERYONE was better liked by the public during the 1995 government shutdown. New polling indicates Americans are more short-tempered than they wee 18 years ago.

We've been here before.

At least eighteen times since 1976, according to Wikipedia. In fact, George W. Bush has the praiseworthy distinction of being the only President since Gerald Ford to avoid a government shutdown during his time in office. 

But most of those shutdowns garnered light interest from public opinion pollsters, scant attention from the political press, and were generally far less glamorous than the one that took place between the Republican Congress and Democratic President in the 1990s, and the one happening now.

There's been a wealth of excellent articles written over the last week by TNR's Nate Cohn, Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics, and Harry Enten of The Guardian, regarding the polling differences between the two shutdowns. Enten blew a hole in the mythology surrounding the '95 stalemate, suggesting the 1996 election results were more the consequence of economic fundamentals than the budget showdown. Cohn piggy-backed off this days later, arguing that the GOP's hold on the House of Representatives is unlikely to change in light of events following '95. Trende set out to distinguish the tactics and goals of the '95 battle with today's.

This post intends to dive further into the data points driving these three mens' pieces, with a focus on the comparison of public blame then and now, Presidential and Congressional approval, generic Congressional ballot polling, and more.


THE BLAME GAME, THEN AND NOW

Enten noted in The Guardian the marked difference in the level of blame the public placed on the political parties in '95 and now. Sure, Republicans are again on the receiving end of most of the finger pointing, but not to the extent they once were.

In fact, the Republicans most favorable data point out of shutdown polling to date comes from a week-old Pew Research survey finding American adults would blame Republicans in Congress only slightly more than the Obama Administration in the event of an actual shutdown.

If the federal government shuts down because Republicans and the Obama Administration can't agree on a budget, who do you think would be more to blame? (September 19-22, 2013, MoE +/- 3.7%)

• Republicans  -  39%
• Democrats  -  36%
• Both Equally  -   17%
• Don't know/Other  -  8%

If public opinion data regarding blame for the current shutdown stopped at the Pew Research poll, well, then the Republicans wouldn't seem to be freaking out so much right now, would they? But a few more pollsters have weighed in since Pew, and they find larger pluralities of Americans holding Republicans responsible for the gridlock:

The Global Strategy Group Poll listed Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats as separate question responses, unlike the other three pollsters who grouped the President with Congressional Democrats into one response.

In the 6 surveys that specifically asked about blame for a potential shutdown since the start of September, 43% on average have blamed Republicans, 36% have blamed Democrats.

But that's still good news for the GOP, at least from a purely comparative standpoint.

In the weeks leading up to the 1995 government shutdown, (which occurred initially on November 14, 1995), well over two-thirds of Americans (39%) blamed the newly-elected Republican Congress for the deadlock, while just a quarter blamed President Clinton and the Democrats (25%); making the Republican's average "margin of blame" 7 points smaller in 2013 than in 1995.

So where should you expect public sentiment to go now that the shutdown is underway? It's hard to say. Immediate media reaction has been overwhelmingly negative for Republicans. Though as Day 2 came to a close, right-wing media, powered by Fox News and The Drudge Report, had been moderately successful at shifting focus to the White House's refusal to sign House-passed appropriations bills that would fund the National Institute of Health, Veterans Affairs, and national parks.

Though if 1995 is any guide (and it hasn't been, at least with regards to public blame for the shutdown), things are about to get a little worse for the GOP. See the table below of every survey to ask Americans who they blamed for the government shutdowns in 1995-96:

Prime-Time Addresses Have Moved Public Opinion Before, But Obama's Starting From FAR Behind On Syria

All five men have delivered prime-time TV addresses regarding imminent military action from behind the desk above, though none have faced a Congress as skeptical, or an American public more unified in opposition.

In less than 12 hours, President Obama will deliver a national address in prime-time in an attempt to rally the country, and congress, behind a possible military strike against a chemical-weapons yielding Middle Eastern dictator.

But it's far from the first time a commander-in-chief has pep-talked the nation in advance of (or as often the case, just after) the commencement of major military endeavors. In fact, Presidents have spoken to the nation in televised addresses designed to coincide with imminent overseas hostilities no less than nine times across the last five Presidents over the last 30 years.

Unfortunately for Barack Obama, his "rally-to-the-flag," pre-war address will have two dubious distinctions.

First, unlike President Reagan's military outings in Grenada and Libya, or George Bush Sr.'s Panama and Iraq Invasion, or Clinton's Somalia, Sudan and Kosovo bombings, or George W. Bush's wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, or Libya in 2011, President Obama is tasked with selling a phenomenally unpopular mission in Syria.

Furthermore, though each of the last four Presidents have seen worse job approval ratings than Obama is currently seeing at some point in their respective presidencies, none of them were so unpopular as he is now on the eve of a potential military strike against another country.

Consider the table below, which documents Barack Obama's job approval rating since the August 21, 2013 Syrian WMD attack that got this mess started, as well as support vs. opposition for military action in Syria since the same date:

The characters beside pollster identification in the table on the right above corresponds to survey question wording. Please feel free to ask me for any particular poll's question wording.

Over the last 2-3 weeks, Barack Obama has averaged a 45/50% job approval rating, while support for the proposed military operation in Syria has been anemic, at 32/52%.

What's worse? Over the last 7 days, Obama's average job approval rating has dropped to 44/51%, while opposition to engagement surged upwards (averaging a 30/60% support/oppose rating).

How Concerned Should Hillaryland Be About Barack Obama's Political Standing In 2016?

Though Clinton's soaring approval ratings seemingly did little to help Gore in 2000, and McCain's popular vote percentage far exceeded the number who approved of the job Dubya was doing, the elder Bush's electoral performance in 1988 closely mirrored public approval of his boss, Ronald Reagan. Photo taken July 1988, courtesy of the Reagan Library.

President Barack Obama's job approval rating currently sits at about 45/50% per the Real Clear Politics aggregator, 44/50% according to Huffington Posts's Pollster, or 46/49% per TPM Polltracker.

All in all, these are some pretty rough numbers for the President, especially considering where he stood for most of the 2012 election year, and represents one of his worst periods in terms of job approval since the Fall of  2010 and 2011.

Fortunately for Obama, he'll never have to stand before voters for re-election again. Unfortunately for Democrats, they'll endure the burden of running for office with the anchor of an unpopular Presidency around their neck, assuming Obama's ratings hold at current levels or get worse.

In fact, recent history would suggest that 2014 Senate and House contenders should fear the President's popularity the most. In 2010, Obama sported an abysmal 44/55% job approval rating, and Republicans won in a landslide. Something similar happened in 2006, when George W. Bush had a 43/57% approval rating, and the Democrats won in a landslide. In 2002, a hugely popular post-9/11 George Bush was able to flout tradition when his party won an impressive popular vote victory and picked up several seats.

But what if we look further down the road? Can the way voters feel about President Obama on election night 2016 affect the vote count for Hillary Clinton? Or Joe Biden? Or Howard Dean? Or any number of possible 2016 Democratic nominees? Intuition and common-sense suggests yes, and at least one poll-analyst seems to agree. But historical evidence provides room for doubt.

The series of tables below detail outgoing Presidential job approval ratings in the final month(s) of the presidential campaigns to replace them. And as you can see, especially with regards to the 2008, 2000, and 1960 presidential elections, the term-limited President's ratings didn't appear to make or break his party's nominee:

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, & Barack Obama: Comparing Presidential Favorability with Job Approval

President Clinton stands apart from Presidents Bush and Obama in that his job approval rating varied widely from his favorability ratings at times during his presidency. Bush and Obama have seen no such variation.

About a month ago, Gallup released a survey on former President George W. Bush that received a surprising amount of attention - for the first time since April 2005, before Hurricane Katrina turned his personal popularity upside down for the remainder of his presidency, the once deeply unpopular former President saw his favorable rating surpass his unfavorable rating (49/46%).

Notable not only for the incredible duration of his unpopularity, his most recent Gallup standing represents a 31 POINT shift in Bush's net favorable/unfavorable rating since shortly after leaving office, when he clocked in at a dismal 35/63%.

So there you have it. A man who was disliked by super-majorities just four years ago now finds public opinion split on the subject. And while his rating is lower than both the current President's (who last found himself at 55/43% in a Gallup survey), and his predecessor's (who was at 69/27% last August), it's still a bit hard for this political junkie to fathom the guy that even Republicans had lost faith in could possibly be viewed favorably by a near majority of the country.

But lets not make more of this survey than it actually is, as several mostly conservative pundits and bloggers did by claiming the results confirmed George W. Bush was somehow more popular than Barack Obama.

Where did conservatives go wrong in making this assertion?  They made the mistake of merging the meaning of favorability with job approval by assuming that Obama's 47/44% job rating (as reported by the Gallup daily tracker on June 11th, the day the Bush favorability poll was released) was the same thing as Bush's favorability rating (as measured June 1-4, 2013).

It's not.

Asking a voter whether they view an individual favorably or unfavorably is different in both language and meaning than asking a voter if they approve or disapprove of the job someone is doing.

For example, President Obama's most recent favorability rating, as measured by Gallup in April of this year, put him at a fairly strong 55/43%. The Gallup daily tracking poll taken at the same time put his job approval rating, however, at a less impressive 48/46%. George W. Bush left office with a poor 40/59% favorability rating, but an even worse 34/61% job approval rating. Gallup's final survey of President Clinton's favorability, while still in office, was December 2-4, 2000, and found him at an impressive 57/41%. But Americans were even more fond of the job Clinton was doing as President than they were of him personally, with 60% expressing approval, and 35% expressing disapproval.

So a few bloggers got it wrong in asserting that Bush is now more popular than Obama, as job approval is not precisely predictive of favorability. But "precisely" is the operative word there.

A close comparison of the entirety of polling on the favorability and job approval ratings of the last three Presidents illustrates that while favorability and job approval ratings are not mirror images of one another, they travel in fairly close lock-step, with only one exception: Bill Clinton from 1998-2000.

Just consider the chart below of President Barack Obama's national favorability and job approval averages since taking office in 2009, broken down into four month periods, or thirds of a year:

Data includes 410 favorability surveys taken from January 20, 2009-present, and 645 job approval surveys, compiled from Polling Report, Real Clear Politics, and TPM Poll Tracker.

As the averages illustrate, Obama has maintained a slightly higher favorability rating than job approval rating throughout his presidency. But the trends, the dips and bounces, match up pretty closely, as the below line graph of the above data illustrates:

With the exception of the first year of his Presidency, Barack Obama's job approval/disapproval and favorable/unfavorable ratings have rarely deviated from the 50% level.

And while George W. Bush's overall trends were much different than Obama's, the pattern of favorability rating tracking closely to job approval was even more apparent throughout his 8 year presidency. See the tables and charts below of his ratings, averaged into 4 month increments.

Data includes 485 favorability surveys taken from January 20, 2001-January 20, 2009, and 1,428 job approval surveys, compiled from Polling Report and Real Clear Politics.

Which of Hillary's 2008 weaknesses are most likely to reemerge in 2016? Part I: The "CHANGE" Factor

"Change" candidates aren't always successful at seeking their party's nomination, but that was not the case in 2008. If Clinton wasn't the change candidate then, how can she be in 2016? Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Richard Drew/Pool

In 2008, the Clinton juggernaut collapsed before a comparatively unknown, three-year Senator from Illinios, in part because the big-wigs in Hillaryland failed to anticipate the degree to which members of their own party wanted a candidate who represented that exhausted political buzzword: "change."

It's not that Mark Penn, Patti Solis Doyle, Howard Wolfson, and other 2008 Clinton campaign verterans were idiots - they knew something about how to run a political campaign, and were certainly well aware that after 2.5 years of a historically unpopular President George W. Bush, Americans at the national level would be craving change. But what were the odds that Democrats would turn those same desires against their own darling Clinton? After all, it was the Clinton family that ushered the Democrats out of the political wilderness of the 1980s. It was the Clintons who became the first Democrats to win two presidential terms since FDR. It was the Clintons that presided over the greatest peacetime economic expansion in history.

Yet still, in the Winter and Spring of 2008, Democrats simply weren't buying what the Clintons were selling anymore; this wasn't an "experience" election, and Hillary was NOT the candidate of change.

Whether through miscalculation on her campaign's part, or simply her opponent's own strength, Clinton performed very, very poorly among voters in her party who said they wanted a candidate that could best "bring about change," which, unfortunately for Hillary, wound up being the majority of the Democratic electorate that year.

Flash forward five years, and Hillary Clinton again leads the primary, though this time sweeping nearly every subset of every subgroup of potential Democratic primary voters. Which begs the question: is 2016 the next 2008? Will the next Democratic Presidential primary, or even the next general election, feature a "change" component to the extent seen in 2008? It's hard to say, and there are some obvious differences.

In 2016, it will be Hillary's party that has dominated the White House for 8 years, which could end up a net negative OR positive for her campaign, depending on how Americans continue to perceive the job President Barack Obama is doing (which, as of today, isn't too well).

Yet if the national mood is such that a party of Obama-Democrats jump on the "change" bandwagon once more, Hillary Clinton has a major soft spot for opponents to target, especially if 2008 is any guide.

To understand the extend of Hillary's potential weakness with this group of voters, consider the chart below that documents the make-up of the 2008 Democratic primary electorate based on what voters identified as the "top candidate quality" to exit pollsters, as well as how proponents of each candidate quality split their vote between Clinton and Obama:

Data is compiled from CNN's state-by-state exit polling. I compiled the national data from CNN state exit polling. That process can be found here.

The difference in Obama and Clinton's vote margins among people who identified the ability to "bring about change" as the most important candidate quality, and those who did not, is stark. Obama carried the "change" voters by a landslide 41 points (68-27%), while Hillary carried the rest (voters who said experience, electability, or empathy for others was the most important candidate quality) by an identical 41 points, or 63-22%.

The Predictive Power of Presidential Job Approval on Election Outcomes, according to 1978-2012 Exit Polling

Presidential Job Approval based on exit polling, 1978-2012

It's been posited by some that a president's job approval rating is a pretty decent predictor of eventual election outcomes. But study's that have looked at this before tend to base their findings on pre-election political surveys on who says they will vote, rather than exit poll data that surveys actual voters.

A look at what exit polls have reported on past presidential job approval shows that while attitudes towards the President's job performance are occasionally on-the-mark with regards to the national popular vote, they're not always. For example, voters are frequently willing to vote AGAINST a President or his party's nominee whose job performance they APPROVE of.

More than that, exit poll findings regarding a president's job approval are far more predictive of actual results when an incumbent is seeking re-election, as opposed to the incumbent party's nominee seeking election.

Job performance also tends to be less prognosticative of actual results in midterm elections, as opposed to Presidential, while the President's APPROVAL rating is more likely to reflect his proportion of the vote than his DISAPPROVAL rating is to reflect his opponent's vote share.
The chart below documents the President's job approval rating in every presidential and midterm election since 1978. From 2004-2012, exit poll data from CNN is relied upon. From 1978-2002, exit poll data is provided by Samuel J. Best and Brian S. Krueger's Exit Polls, Surveying the American Electorate, 1972-2010, with the exception of 1988 data, which was retrieved here. Unfortunately, exit pollsters did not ask voters their opinion regarding presidential job approval in 1980, 1984, 1992, and 1996. Thus, in 4 of the 18 elections examined in the chart below, the President's job approval rating is based on the final Gallup Poll taken prior to that election, not exit poll data.

* indicates the President's job approval rating for this year is based on Gallup's final pre-election poll. All other findings come from exit poll results. Red indicates a Republican election victory, blue indicates a Democratic election victory. "H" means "House." "S" means "Senate." House and Senate votes tallies are provided by USHouse.gov

As the chart indicates, excluding midterm elections, voters have frequently voted against Presidents they approve of. A solid 54% majority approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing as they headed to the polls on Nov 6, 2012, but the President only won 51.0% of the vote.

PPP promotes findings of Republican fringe; glosses over poor job approval for Obama

Public Policy Polling is out with their first post - election take on the American pulse, testing everything from President Obama's job approval rating, to feelings on various political celebrities such as Nate Silver and General David Petraeus. In case you were wondering, Nate Silver's favorability rating is 12% favorable, 10% unfavorable, while 77% are unsure of either who he is or how they feel about him). In a post titled: "Republicans not handling election results well", PPP blogger Tom Jensen fails to make mention of President Obama's abysmally low 37/59% job approval rating with Independents. Not to mention the President's rating with ALL voter's is an unimpressive 50/47%. In fact, it is historically poor when compared to past presidential job approval ratings.

Take, for example, PPP's measure of how Barack Obama was doing at a similar point after his first election (albeit, a little later) in North Carolina: by a 66/25% margin, North Carolinians approved of President elect Obama's transition into office . Granted, the survey questions are different, but they both measured a level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with Barack Obama shortly after winning a general election. Not only that, but Independent voters gave him a 65/24% approval rating in the days just before his 2009 inauguration, a very far cry from his post-2012 election rating of 37/59%.