Perspective Check: Clinton's Not Plummeting In The Polls

Hillary Clinton's campaign points out two new polls showing Clinton with leads exceeding five points in Iowa. At this point in the cycle, you can pick and choose your polls in the same way you can pick and choose your preferred campaign narrative.

The reality is that Iowa is very hard to poll, and it is very hard to discern a trend. It's probably accurate to say that Iowa is as tied as best we can figure out.

So is Hillary Clinton losing support among women? The Des Moines Register poll shows her down five points in the crosstabs to Obama, but the AP poll shows her up 8 -- more than 33% of all women support her.

Who is right? Note that the AP poll was conducted over two weeks, from Nov. 7 to Nov. 25, and so it incorporates two weeks worth of electoral flux.

Comments

The dates of the AP poll make it irrelevant for today. There were plenty of polls back then that showed her ahead. So what?

Posted by heather | December 3, 2007 12:42 PM

In light of her relentless attacking, I'd say we have all the perspective we need.

Posted by Keith | December 3, 2007 12:55 PM

Finally, the media's constant attempt to get a big story regardless of the truth is getting a second look. As a Democrat, I am excited to see that the race is tight. This is good for all of us. Over the past month, if you had been reading the papers, you would have thought that Obama was headed to the White House. Hopefully, more pieces with perspective will show the race as it is. Good for the Atlantic and may the best candidate win!

Posted by Jason Durant | December 3, 2007 1:15 PM

The ISU poll was conducted between Nov. 6-18. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/ISU_poll_dec_03.html

Obama's is leading or tied in every post-thanksgiving poll (except the rasmussen poll which gave Clinton a 2 point edge).

Posted by John Riley | December 3, 2007 1:27 PM

As an Obama supporter, I love these polls becasue they are obviously not reflective of what's happnening now but they are still impairing HIllary's abilty to lower Iowa expectations. Perfect!

Posted by RKA | December 3, 2007 1:53 PM

Way to go Hilary, hold your head high, and go for the goal post. Polls are just polls. It the final tally of one state, another state, and more states, and eventually the national one that counts.....

Posted by Cook | December 3, 2007 2:06 PM

O.K., I'm confused. You're touting two polls-one fielded Nov. 6-18, the other fielded Nov. 7-25-to counter the results of a poll fielded Nov. 25-28. Are you stupid or are you just taking the Clinton campaign email/fax straight off the presses and transcribing it as they give it to you? I just don't understand how polls fielded well before a certain point in time better reflect the state of a race than polls taken closer to the present time.

For the record, what you're doing here (i.e., when you act as stenographer rather than reporter) doesn't really require a cerebral cortex, just a spine and hindbrain.

Posted by Michael's Mom | December 3, 2007 2:29 PM

I don't doubt that you can read the polling data yourself, but looking at the table, it does look like Hilary Clinton is genuinely dropping. Furthermore, those two polls that you tout were taken largely collected data when Clinton was up so they might not be sufficiently time sensitive to the changes that the other surveys reflect.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/ia/iowa_democratic_caucus-208.html#polls

Posted by teenage lunatic | December 3, 2007 2:55 PM

Media is dishonest--they call Obama's 3 points margin a "lead" and "Clinton drop" The truth is that the error for this poll is more than 4 points. While when Clinton leads more than 5 points media call it a "tie". Media what to create a tied race so to sell stories. So disgusting!

Posted by Wendy | December 3, 2007 3:26 PM

I see the point about 2 weeks of polling data, but then they weren't polling the same people over two weeks they were conducting polls over the period--sort of a moving snapshot, it would be interesting (though I suppose impossible and availabe to see if there were trend lines in those numbers, i.e. response pretty positive for hillary at the beginning but poor towards the end or vice versa, that would show some kind of fluctuation, but my understanding is the the pew poll shows an average.) And I understand that the Dem Reg poll tends to be the most accurate. Comparing the reporting on this page to the way the poll is framed on other pages as well, it seems like we are being told the same thing an older poll is relevant because it contradicts a newer poll which seems like an odd argument to make even allowing for the longer polling period. I am willing to admit that it is neck and neck in iowa, but I am not sure that the Hillary is up in Iowa is completely accurate. Am I biased here as an Obama supporter or is there something wrong with reporting it this way????

Posted by JC | December 3, 2007 3:50 PM

NO JC
You are not biased. This is just a deceitful method to keep the 'inevitability' mantra for HRClinton running.

The media really is rooting for Hill and Bill..we even have Bill on the cover of GQ being touted as a Man of the year

the sycophancy of the media is nauseating and now even the internet blogs engage in mouthing the talking points of HRClinton's campaign.

unbelievable

Posted by vicissitude | December 3, 2007 4:02 PM

The media can just follow Karl Rove's memo to Obama, so they can beat Hillary. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dee0a6e8-a109-11dc-9f34-0000779fd2ac.html

Posted by linda | December 3, 2007 4:05 PM

re:JC

The ISU poll that had Clinton up also had Romney up, and the newer polls show Huckabee slightly edging Romney, so perhaps these polls necessarily picked up the movement on the ground.

Posted by teenage lunatic | December 3, 2007 4:05 PM

It seems this is not a question of which poll is accurate but more a question of when was it accurate. A poll that began over two weeks ago is a snapshot of events at that time. The AP poll also ended as the DesMoines Register poll began. So if the question is which better reflect current events, I'd say the Register poll is more accurate as of today.

Posted by grant | December 3, 2007 4:19 PM

Good Lord, we all sound like a bunch of starving peasants fighting over crumbs. Haven't we been hearing since January that the race in Iowa is "very close." The fact is that no candidate is "up" and no candidate is "down." No candidate is "surging" and no candidate is "falling behind." This is a tight race, always has been and when the votes are cast it will probably have very little effect on the rest of the race. As a non-Iowan, I'm likely to vote against the winner of these over-rated Iowa caucuses, no matter who the winner is.

Posted by Brains | December 3, 2007 4:50 PM

As mentioned before, HRC will win. No one - yes, no one - can best the Clinton Machine. This Machine is bigger than GOP. You have no idea the power it has. HRC will win. In the end, you will vote for HRC, even if you do not want to. That is the power of the Machine.

Obama must work harder, harder, and harder. Edwards must help Obama.

Posted by eorse | December 3, 2007 5:03 PM

As mentioned before, HRC will win. No one - yes, no one - can best the Clinton Machine. This Machine is bigger than GOP. You have no idea the power it has. HRC will win. In the end, you will vote for HRC, even if you do not want to. That is the power of the Machine.

Obama must work harder, harder, and harder. Edwards must help Obama.

Posted by eorse | December 3, 2007 5:03 PM

The rules of Iowa lets the candidate's supporters whose first choice gets 15 percent or less to go to another candidate. If Biden, Richardson or Dodd do not achieve more than 15 percent, polls indicate that their supporters go mostly to Edwards or Obama. Clinton gets hardly any of Biden's, Richardson's or Dodd's supporters. I believe that she will come in third place in Iowa from the forgoing information.

Posted by tanaS | December 3, 2007 5:05 PM

Thank you Marc Ambinder for this very important article. I have grown personally tired with the mainstream media's inequitable behavior towards Obama and Hillary. If Obama is ahead by a point, he is SURGING. If Hillary is ahead by a few points, it's A TIE.

It's time to get a grip and realize that the rightwing wants Obama to be the Dem nominee so they can destroy him in the general election.

Posted by Amanda Burke | December 3, 2007 6:40 PM

Don't care about poll numbers (though I agree that looking at old ones doesn't seem to be a good way to counter the new ones). What I heard today is that Hillary attacked Obama over something he wrote in elementary school...

Maybe not 'game over' for Clinton but its going to be tough for her to hold on to her supporters with ridiculous stuff like that.

Posted by Paul | December 3, 2007 7:57 PM

Frankly, I think the Democrats would rather run against ANYONE but Dr. Ron Paul. Much as we'd like politics to be positive, it is in fact ruled almost entirely by negatives. For instance, what's the biggest negative the Republican Party is facing in 2008? Iraq - a staggering 70% of people favor IMMEDIATE withdrawl from Iraq. Who is the only candidate that doesn't have that negative? Dr. Paul, who advocates using those trillions of dollars to secure our border (perhaps against Saudis who were 20 of the 24 terrorists in 9/11) and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure which is far more worrying than the loss of Social Security. Hm, full employment, withdrawl from Iraq and a huge boost to our economy from rebuilding our infrastructure - what Democrat wants to run against that? They'd look like the Republican in the group! Republican party used to be real good once upon a time - Dr. Paul wants to return it to its roots!

Posted by Louis Nardozi | December 3, 2007 8:35 PM

I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny. where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words. Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric. Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep insideI know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by bringing to them a real change, a change they long to see.The question is, can that happen?

Posted by David Tarus | December 4, 2007 6:31 AM

All the presidential candidates are busy criss crossing the country trying to sell their policies to the American electorate, to me that is OK, but is there anyone of them who realy understands what America neeeds? They talk about war in Iraq, Health, Education, Infrastructure and alot of other Issues. Majority of the presidential aspirants have had the prevelledge to influence policy making in this country in one way or another, what is it that they never did before that they can do when they get into the big office! We are watching.

Posted by David Kipkosgei Arap Tarus (Kapserton) | December 4, 2007 6:54 AM

I wish our governement and our media were as color-blind as the rest of us Americans. As long as they continue to talk about it, the ridiculous divisions of color will never go away.Black voters are justified in supporting Hillary Clinton - but they are missing an opportunity. Barack Obama has brought legitimacy to the idea of an African-American running for President.Hillary is beating Obama among black voters becuase black voters are rightfully more concerned with qualifications as opposed to race. Nobody dislikes Barak Obama. But he has hardly any experience, where-as Hillary has years and years.

Posted by David Kipkosgei Arap Tarus (Kapserton) | December 4, 2007 6:59 AM