NBC Poll: '2016 Field Is Crowded -- and Mostly Unpopular'

[Fuzzybigfoot]

What we should be looking at two years from the election is not the polls but positives/negatives of candidates. Hillary has 40% negatives with 100% name recognition. Negatives stay. People who form a negative opinion about somebody will keep that negative opinion.

That's true.  That's why public figures with high name recognition never see their popularity change much over time.  E.g.:

Why were her approvals so low in 2000?  Do we blame wives for he sex scandals of their husbands now? 

[Tender Branson]

What we should be looking at two years from the election is not the polls but positives/negatives of candidates. Hillary has 40% negatives with 100% name recognition. Negatives stay. People who form a negative opinion about somebody will keep that negative opinion.

That's true.  That's why public figures with high name recognition never see their popularity change much over time.  E.g.:

Why were her approvals so low in 2000?  Do we blame wives for he sex scandals of their husbands now? 

No, I guess because she announced a run for the Senate.

Every time Hillary runs for something, her favorables drop to record lows (not in 2006, because it was a solid Dem year).

[Ljube]

Barack Obama favorabilities:




Hillary Clinton favorabilities:

[Beet]

Precisely. Hillary's problem is that her favor-abilities go sky high when she's humiliated or seen as a victim (1998, 2008), but if she actually comes close to success or power (2000, 2007), her favor-abilities drop.

There are two exceptions. The first was when her husband was first elected in 1993. The second was when she served in the Senate in 2003-2007.

[IceSpear]

One interesting thing in that chart is that she was never overwhelmingly unpopular. She's always ranged from around an even split to overwhelmingly popular. Of course, most of us already knew that once she started being seen as a candidate again she'd switch from the latter to the former, the only thing that's somewhat surprising is that it happened so quickly. I thought it would be more gradual.

[Mr. Morden]

What we should be looking at two years from the election is not the polls but positives/negatives of candidates. Hillary has 40% negatives with 100% name recognition. Negatives stay. People who form a negative opinion about somebody will keep that negative opinion.

That's true.  That's why public figures with high name recognition never see their popularity change much over time.  E.g.:

Why were her approvals so low in 2000?  Do we blame wives for he sex scandals of their husbands now? 

The Lewinsky scandal made her extremely popular (see the peak in 1999), but then that quickly faded, and her 2000 Senate race brought her back down to Earth.

Also, *favorability*, not approval.

[Ljube]

What we should be looking at two years from the election is not the polls but positives/negatives of candidates. Hillary has 40% negatives with 100% name recognition. Negatives stay. People who form a negative opinion about somebody will keep that negative opinion.

That's true.  That's why public figures with high name recognition never see their popularity change much over time.  E.g.:

Why were her approvals so low in 2000?  Do we blame wives for he sex scandals of their husbands now? 

The Lewinsky scandal made her extremely popular (see the peak in 1999), but then that quickly faded, and her 2000 Senate race brought her back down to Earth.

Also, *favorability*, not approval.

Yes, favorability, as in I still have a favorable opinion of President Obama, but I disapprove of him.

[Fuzzybigfoot]

What we should be looking at two years from the election is not the polls but positives/negatives of candidates. Hillary has 40% negatives with 100% name recognition. Negatives stay. People who form a negative opinion about somebody will keep that negative opinion.

That's true.  That's why public figures with high name recognition never see their popularity change much over time.  E.g.:

Why were her approvals so low in 2000?  Do we blame wives for he sex scandals of their husbands now? 

The Lewinsky scandal made her extremely popular (see the peak in 1999), but then that quickly faded, and her 2000 Senate race brought her back down to Earth.

Also, *favorability*, not approval.

Yes, favorability, as in I still have a favorable opinion of President Obama, but I disapprove of him.

Aren't first ladies always supposed to have high favorability ratings, though?  Why would a senate run specifically change that? 

[Ljube]

What we should be looking at two years from the election is not the polls but positives/negatives of candidates. Hillary has 40% negatives with 100% name recognition. Negatives stay. People who form a negative opinion about somebody will keep that negative opinion.

That's true.  That's why public figures with high name recognition never see their popularity change much over time.  E.g.:

Why were her approvals so low in 2000?  Do we blame wives for he sex scandals of their husbands now? 

The Lewinsky scandal made her extremely popular (see the peak in 1999), but then that quickly faded, and her 2000 Senate race brought her back down to Earth.

Also, *favorability*, not approval.

Yes, favorability, as in I still have a favorable opinion of President Obama, but I disapprove of him.

Aren't first ladies always supposed to have high favorability ratings, though?  Why would a senate run specifically change that? 

While she was considered the first lady, she enjoyed a high popularity. Some of us are old enough to remember.

The first drop in popularity was due to the failure of Hillarycare. She couldn't recover from that and would have been Obama v0.5 if it hadn't been for Bill's infidelity which generated a lot of sympathy for her.

Then, she moved to New York in the second part of 1999, signaling that she would run for the senate in 2000, which quickly erased any sympathy for her (she was a politician again).

She enjoyed solid favorability ratings for a senator, but when she announced that she was running for president, her favorabilities dropped again.

When she became Secretary of State, she enjoyed same high favorabilities that Obama enjoyed, but her favorabilities endured, because she was not perceived a part of Obama's inner circle on domestic policy.

That's it, in a nutshell.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

    Elizabeth Warren 23%-17% (+6)
    Hillary Clinton 43%-40% (+3)

But Hillary is so popular!

[The_Doctor]

I realize this sounds partisan, but bear in mind a few things. Hillary Clinton being at +3 is not necessarily good (or necessarily bad). It means that she's at root a polarizing figure who already has significant legions of supporters and detractors. It's reasonable to infer from this that likely, as the incumbent party's standard bearer, this could work out that she has a high floor but a low ceiling. She was popular as Secretary of State, because she was out of the political realm and she was able to float above it as a tough as nails Secretary of State. Now that she's back in the political sphere, the whole accumulation of her 25+ years in the public spotlight is bringing her back to Earth.

I mean, these ratings confirm that the Clintons are the most widely known political couple in the United States. The country is intimately aware and familiar with Bill and Hillary Clinton beyond what anyone would consider "Too Much Information." Information that we would not get about the Bush or Obama marriages is widely known about the Clintons by almost every individual who will vote in the United States in 2016. The Clintons have attracted their supporters and foes, and they are pretty polarizing overall. I don't see less than 47% of the country supporting them and opposing them, in equal measure. Given who they are, there are very few undecided voters. 

Put it this way. They're like the Royal Family (with all their drama), on steroids and with none of the finesse the Queen has in shaping public opinion. There is no way the Clintons can plausibly run as the choice of the future, after they're asking the country to stand 4-8 more years of them. We know what we're getting with the Clintons, hands down. A brand of Third Way Democratic politics, adjusted slightly to the left, for the party's political center in 2016. A somewhat hawkish foreign policy, and the Clintons would probably be open to signing entitlement reforms and running on it (not the first time they did this; Bill Clinton ran with the welfare reform campaign). And probably a healthy dose of talk about scandals, whether real or imagined.

The top Republicans, on the other hand, save Jeb Bush, all have room to grow. They all have low approval and disapproval ratings, suggesting large amounts of undecided voters.  Most of the Republicans weren't even known eight years ago (Rand Paul was in private life, Ted Cruz Solicitor General in Texas, Marco Rubio State House Speaker in Florida, Scott Walker Milwaukee Chief Executive, so on and so on. There's no way you could have picked any of them out of a lineup). They can - for better or worse - define and be defined, but the public knows very little. On balance, compared to a world famous candidate, with every detail of her life pored over, this can be a good thing, in terms of being fresh.

In fact, I'd surmise this is the reason Hillary has led so consistently. Many of the respondents pick a known quantity over the unknown one. This is good and bad. One, the Republican candidates can grow and fashion public opinion about themselves. Two, the downside, Hillary can define them early on - whoever is the Republican nominee. That would be the playbook they used in 1996, to define Bob Dole, as he emerged as the GOP nominee.

On balance, I'd say if these poll results are anywhere near accurate, it suggests that Hillary Clinton will have a rougher time of it than we assume. I would say it's reasonable that if these numbers stick where they are, the high floor / low ceiling assumption is a good one. I'd also surmise that the GOP nominee (if it's not Jeb; I stand by the contention Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz are the only two Republicans who would lose outright to Hillary Clinton) probably can boost his or her ratings running as the agent of change and a new face against her.

[IceSpear]

    Elizabeth Warren 23%-17% (+6)
    Hillary Clinton 43%-40% (+3)

But Hillary is so popular!

Indeed.

Among Democrats:

    Hillary Clinton 78%-5% (+73)
    Elizabeth Warren 36%-6% (+30)