A new poll by Democratic pollster PPP (Pubic Policy Polling) confirms two troubling trends that have emerged since late summer in state polling of the general election.
One is the weakness of Democratic candidates in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, essential to almost any Democratic electoral path to victory. This weakness is reflected both in the Senate race and the general election race, though Daily Kos' election analyst Jeff Singer has pointed to modestly positive indicators in the Toomey race (mostly relative to prior polling of it). But a general weakness is also reflected in approval ratings for President Obama in the state, where he is currently 13 pts underwater.
When Quinnipiac released polls earlier this month suggesting that Clinton and Sanders were losing most GOP general election matchups in Pennsylvania (along with Ohio and Florida), the boo birds came out, claiming bias and inaccurate modeling, with Dean Chambers-like zeal in scrutinizing the subtabs. This despite Quinnipiac having a better overall predictive record and independent rating than a preferred pollster like PPP, the latter having delivered Democrats occasionally better horserace numbers in the past.
Part of this can be chalked up to the fact that Democrats tend to take Pennsylvania for granted, despite the fact that John Kerry only won the state in 2004 by fewer than three points, and Obama in 2012 by roughly five. It's a swing state by any measure, and one that reliably elects Republican in the midterms, and may yet elect a GOP candidate in a presidential contest as well.
That's a reality suggested by this poll, in which PPP corroborates Quinnipiac's discouraging outlook on Democratic chances in Pennsylvania in 2016:
General election match ups for President in Pennsylvania are a mixed bag. Hillary Clinton trails behind Ben Carson (47/43), Chris Christie (45/41), Marco Rubio (45/42), Donald Trump (45/43), and Carly Fiorina (43/42) in the state. But she has leads over John Kasich (41/39), Jeb Bush (45/40), Ted Cruz (46/40), Rick Santorum (47/39) and Mike Huckabee (47/38). Republicans leading half of the match ups is a pretty good sign for them in a state where they haven't won the general election in almost 30 years.Joe Biden leads all the Republican candidates we tested against him in Pennsylvania and on average does about 6 points better than Clinton in the comparable general election match ups. He leads Carson 46/44, Trump 45/43, Rubio 45/41, and Fiorina 46/40.
Clinton's advantage against Bush in this poll is a lone bright spot in an otherwise dismal picture where she is losing the state to four of the five GOP frontrunners (Trump, Carson, Rubio and Fiorina).This brings us to the second trend to watch.
While frontrunner Hillary Clinton has begun to shore up her primary position for the early contests of January and February, her position in the general election, as reflected in both state and national polling, has been weakening. This isn't really to Team Sanders' advantage, by the way, as his own position has tended to be within 1-2 points of Clinton's own, with small fluctuations depending upon matchup.
There's a tendency among Democrats to want to view the health of their candidates in the primary contests as reflective of general election strength, but this is a distorted mirror. Democrats only make up roughly a third of the electorate, and the pitch they make to their activists does not have an isomorphic impact on independents and Republicans. Moreover, the audience for primary debates is largely Democratic activists themselves, so movement among undecided Democrats does not necessarily mean positive movement within the cohorts of undecided Independents or 'persuadable' Republicans.
It's important to recognize that, going into this week's debate, Democrats were very much behind the eightball in national and state polling, and Obama favorability is on average 5-6 points in the red at the national level. Looking only at one proxy race, Clinton vs Bush, which pits an establishment Democrat against an establishment Republican, Clinton is 1.6 pts behind Bush in the aggregate, and is trailing in 4 of 5 national matchups for the past five major polls in the past month. Against an outsider candidate like Ben Carson, who is beginning to overtake Donald Trump in some GOP primary polling, the picture is far worse.
At the state level, using Bush and Carson again as proxies for Republican insider and outsider candidates respectively, Clinton is showing weakness in other critical swing states beyond Pennsylvania: Florida (Bush, Carson), Virginia (Bush, Carson), North Carolina (Bush, Carson), Iowa (Bush, Carson), New Hampshire (Bush, Carson), and Ohio (Bush, Carson).
There are few bright spots in those matchups. New Hampshire against Carson perhaps, but that is based on rather stale data from April and mid-August. In aggregate, the picture suggests Iowa, North Carolina and Florida beginning to move off the map, and Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire looking (to be generous) like coin flips.
This diary isn't intended to dispirit Democratic activists. On the contrary, it's meant to counsel against complacency and unrealistic expectations of easy Democratic victory in 2016 based on electoral "blue wall" theories that are no longer operative. There've been a few diaries published in recent weeks discussing how Hillary Clinton in particular will not only inherit the Obama map of 2008/2012, but perhaps expand on it, picking up states in the deep south and Appalachia, based on Bill Clinton's success there in 1992 and 1996.
To be blunt, this is not going to happen. The fundamentals – particularly incumbency, presidential favorability and the domestic economy – are not in the Democrats' favor this cycle. Some predictive models using variables that have been accurate predictors in the past are forecasting a GOP victory in 2016, and progressive activists are going to have to work their asses off to fight these headwinds, and the first order of business is really to recalibrate our expectations to understand that this race is going to resemble Bush/Gore or Bush/Kerry far more than it's going to resemble the Obama races of recent cycles. The second order of business is to get ready to fight like hell.
The alternative is to hope the GOP nominates a weak general election candidate like Trump, and then be devastated when they don't, and caught off-guard battling an unconventional candidate like Ben Carson, or a better-than-Bush establishment one like Marco Rubio (who in several swing states outperforms the unpopular Jeb!).
I don't doubt that this perspective may not be a popular one, but any reality-based activist community needs skeptical point of views, and Daily Kos can often filter out any sobering perspectives that don't guarantee victory to Democratic candidates. If there are any takeaways from this recent polling, I think they are that 2016 is likely to be very close, Dems may even be at a disadvantage give the fundamentals, and Pennsylvania in particular is not to be taken for granted. Also, we should evaluate the general election race using different data and models than the primary contests. Things don't always move in the same direction.