Talk Elections

http://politi.co/NN1JDw (http://politi.co/NN1JDw)

Santorum and Huckabee are tied in the Hawkeye State with Christie just a point behind them. Rand Paul is on fourth and Rubio in fifth.

The real hilarity (wait to notice the pun) is on the Dem side: Hillary is up 60% to Biden's 18%. Cuomo is tied with Elizabeth Warren at 3%. Take Hillary out and Biden leads Cuomo comfortably but Warren goes up to 8%!

The 2016 Republican Nominee will be certain right after 2012 is over. It's always whoever is next in line.

The Democratic Nominee is always the underdog. Just think, no one knew who Barack Obama was in 2004.
In 2008, Clinton was certain to win, then Barack came and snatched the nomination. In 2004, Dean was gonna take it, Kerry takes Iowa and the nomination. In 1992, Paul Tsongas was our nominee, until Bill Clinton became the "Comeback Kid".  Gary Hart was front runner in 1988, Mike Dukakis wins. 1976, Jimmy Carter comes from nowhere. I doubt Clinton or Biden runs.
My personal choice, is soon-to-be New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich. Andrew Cuomo is in second and Martin O'Malley in third. Elizabeth Warren is way to far to the left to win. In the back of my mind, I kinda hope she loses in November so the media doesn't try to talk her up is a presidential contender.

And who is that supposed to be? No obvious heir is present and I could easily argue that Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee were more obvious heirs for this year. The current primary system isn't very old and we have too few datapoints to really say anything definative like that. Added to that the fact that quite a few GOP heavyweights look like they'll jump into the 2016 fight and I don't think this will hold true at all.

Here are the full results:

Clinton 60%
Biden 18%
Cuomo 3%
Warren 3%
Schweitzer 1%
Warner 1%
O'Malley 0%
Patrick 0%

If Clinton doesn't run:

Biden 36%
Cuomo 14%
Warren 8%
Schweitzer 4%
Warner 3%
O'Malley 2%
Patrick 0%

If neither Biden nor Clinton run:

Cuomo 20%
Warren 11%
Warner 6%
Patrick 4%
Schweitzer 4%
O'Malley 2%

GOP:

Huckabee 17%
Santorum 17%
Christie 16%
Rand Paul 11%
Rubio 10%
J. Bush 8%
Ryan 6%
Palin 4%
Walker 4%

Here's PPP's 2016 Iowa poll from May:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=153361.0

Very little change since then.  Clinton still has a huge lead.  Biden has actually gained a little.  Cuomo has a somewhat bigger lead in the scenario where Biden and Clinton don't run, but I think that's because they stopped polling Feingold, who had been 2nd in that scenario.  Clinton now does equally well among self-described liberals and self-described moderates.  She's at 63% among women and 55% among men.  In a reversal from the earlier poll, Clinton does better among voters under 45 than she does with olds, in part because Biden is catching on among olds (though still way behind Clinton).

On the GOP side, things are remarkably stable.  Huckabee and Santorum have exactly the same tie they had in the last poll, with Christie still 1 point behind.  Biggest change is Palin's decline.  She was at 10% in the last poll, but has now dropped all the way to 4%, a very anemic number for someone with such high name recognition.

GOP winners among each demographic group:

Tea Party member: Paul
not Tea Party member: Huckabee
not sure if Tea Party member: Christie
Evangelical: Santorum
not Evangelical: Christie
moderate: Christie
somewhat conservative: Huckabee
very conservative: Santorum
men: Santorum
women: Huckabee
Republicans: Santorum
Independents: Paul
age 18-45: Christie/Paul tie
age 46-64: Santorum
older than 65: Santorum

Democratic candidates' favorable/unfavorable ratings among Democratic voters:

Clinton 90/6 for +84
Biden 79/11 for +68
Warren 30/10 for +20
Cuomo 26/19 for +7
Patrick 10/9 for +1
Warner 10/10 for +/-0
O'Malley 4/8 for -4
Schweitzer 5/10 for -5

Republican candidates' favorable/unfavorable ratings among Republican voters:

Huckabee 68/20 for +48
Rubio 57/13 for +44
Santorum 65/22 for +43
Christie 57/17 for +40
Walker 50/12 for +38
Ryan 49/14 for +35
Palin 60/26 for +34
J. Bush 53/19 for +34
Rand Paul 49/29 for +20

Yes, Clinton has hit 90% favorability among Iowa Dems.  Again, have we ever had a candidate who started a campaign with such high favorables from their party, aside from an incumbent president?

On the GOP side, several candidates are seeing somewhat diminished favorability since May (Bush, Palin, and Paul being down the most), but Christie's favorability has actually gone up.

Four years make a big difference for Hillary, eh?

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were heir apparents for John mcCain after losing the primaries.
Whoever Romney picks as veep will probably win.

Biden?

No, please, no.

I am sick of Biden and Hillary being considered as possible 2016 contenders. I think it's absurd to think that they'll even be interested in another run. They're yesterday's news.

I keep seeing this and it makes no sense. If you're the Vice President or the Secretary of State, then you're two of the most powerful people in the country and obviously presidential material. You're not 'yesterday's news' because you happen to be over 60.

I still can't see Hillary refusing when the election is literally being handed to her on a silver platter like this. There's a difference between frontrunner-2008 and leading-by-40-points-2016.

But she's repeatedly said that she has no interest in running again. And Biden, well, his whole current appeal is that he says outrageous things, but doesn't have any power. That doesn't translate well to a lasting 2016 campaign.

And either way, the Democrats don't tend to nominate someone who was a loser in a previous primary season, even if they seem popular later. They tend to elect up-and-comers, and do it a lot more than the Republicans do.

None of the Democratic primary campaigns from modern history feature a candidate who would be analogous to Hillary Clinton in 2016 though.  When have they ever had a candidate run who had favorability numbers like this when the campaign started?  When have they had a candidate run who lost the most recent competitive primary race by such a narrow margin?  Closest analogy would be Gary Hart running in 1988 after his close loss in 1984.  And Hart probably would have won the '88 nomination if not for his affair.

So yeah, it's possible that Clinton decides that she really means it about retiring from politics.  But if she does run, she'd be hella* tough to stop.

If she doesn't run, and Biden does, then I guess he starts out leading super-early polls like this, and thus the media would call him the "frontrunner".  But I think his popularity would prove to be more soft (though not as soft as Lieberman's support in the early polls from the 2004 race), and he'd probably end up being overtaken by someone else.

*Gratuitous Eric Cartmanism.

Schweitzer would gain once people get to know him through media coverage, debates, campaigning, and a potential DNC address this year. However, he won't get in if Clinton does.

Warren would be a general election disaster. Absolutely not.

I don't think we should take historical precedent too much into account. Clinton is a far stronger, more popular, and experienced candidate than she was in 2008. I can't imagine any of these people being able to make headway against her if she got in.

Here's the problem with the 2016 Hilary Clinton candidacy: she is deeply unlikable in many circles. That, and it seemed like on the 08 trail, the more we saw of her, the less we like her.

What circles would those be? Among Iowa Democrats, opposition to her is practically non-existent:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_IA_072312.pdf

And a recent Florida poll of likely voters shows her favorability with registered voters, Ds, Rs, and Is, is a strong 68/26%: http://www.suffolk.edu/images/content/FINAL_WED_FL_Marginals_May_9_2012.pdf

Only problem is, I think she's serious about being done with elected office. And even if she did run, a presidential campaign would wear those lofty numbers down. But make no mistake about it, if she somehow did choose to run, she'd be formidable not only against a President Romney, but possibly even in the event of a re-elected Obama.

?

She's currently about the most popular politician in the country.  Obviously, some of that popularity would fade if she got back into partisan politics, but still, the above seems highly questionable.  And we're talking about the Democratic nomination here.  She has a 90% favorable rating among Iowa Democrats.  When have we ever seen a candidate start with numbers like that, aside from incumbent presidents?

i have no qualms about her being formidable, but again, with the right circumstances, and some good opponents, which I certainly see in Schweitzer and Cuomo, she could be quite diminished, and possibly even lose again. The democrats seem to dislike establishment.

There is just no way Clinton would lose to the Bumbling Schweitzer. The only reason she lost in 2008 was because an eloquent orator managed to manipulate a group of idealists. The Montana governor does not have that appeal.

I could get on board a Clinton presidency.

I don't know if she'd run, but she'd be a fool not to. If you ask me, I suspect we'll be at a point in 2015 where a yes from Hillary Clinton would basically guarantee her the presidency. It's just a matter of whether or not she would want it.

I always like reminding people of this, cause a surprising number don't realize it. But based on both Wikipedia and Dave Leip's numbers, Hillary Clinton actually BEAT Barack Obama in the '08 Democratic primary POPULAR VOTE. DNC rules dictate that of course, delegates, and not the actual number of votes a candidate receives, is what determines the winner of the primary. But still, it's not insignificant to note that Obama got the Democratic nomination while receiving LESS votes than his opponent.

Well tbf that was because of Michigan and Florida.

They were both on the ballot in Florida, so no need to take away that state.

Oh, I know. I got so much flack at my arts high school for hating Obama--and yes, I honestly just loathe him. Hillary was the right choice for the simple reason that Obama was never ready to be president.

But hackishness aside, my point is: People were not impressed with me when I brought up the fact that she actually won more votes. They all like to toot their horns about how Gore should've won in '00, but none of them are willing to accept the fact that, technically speaking, more Americans wanted Hillary to be the nominee than Obama.

If only the superdelegates had seen it that way...

I understand what you are saying. Hillary won the big states. But the Obama strategy was to get a lead in the delegates so that Hillary could not. In 2008, Hillary would win a state and get delegates, but Obama would also win delegates so his lead would stick. So if Hillary won delegates, Obama did too, and that negated any pick up in delegates that she won.

I definitely understand Obama's delegate strategy. Just pointing out that though he may have won the primary, he did not receive the most votes.

Cuomo already has the highest unfavorability of all the Dems. Excellent.

What's with all the liberal hate for Andrew Cuomo? He's got the highest approval rating of any Governor in the country and he's our best shot at keeping the White House for more than 8 years.

It's because Republicans seem to like him too. That's an automatic disqualifier for many Democrats (see Hillary Clinton 2008).

Assuming that he runs, I wouldn't be surprised to see Cuomo flat out skip Iowa and focus solely on New Hampshire instead. He really doesn't seem like a good fit for the state.

Maybe because he's right-wing economically and anti-union. Just throwing out ideas.

Because he believes in fiscal responsibility and not free-spending programs? He doesn't bow to unions? We don't owe a debt to unions anymore. He is our best option, and he has what it takes to lead this country. Liberals, Progressives, and my fellow Democrats need to get in line and stop foregoing winning for someone who will doom us like Elizabeth Warren and Russ Feingold. I love them both, but they won't win.

Seriously, why is Elizabeth Warren even being mentioned as a presidential candidate? She hasn't even won her own Senate race yet, and even if she does, why nominate someone whose elected experience includes 4 yrs in the Senate? We all know how that story turns out (thanks, Obama).

The Italo-phobia is strong with this one.

But in all seriousness, I don't want Cuomo doing well either. I'll concede that I don't know much about what he's doing in NY (though all the left wing hatred could mean I'd agree with the guy) but I don't like the Cuomo's.

LOL, Republicans did not like Clinton in 2008. They haven't since the 1990s.

How ironic. (I hate to bump old threads, but for comical effect, I couldn't resist.)