Survey USA, Rasmussen and Quinnipiac all regularly publish state-level polls that match up one or more of the Democratic candidates against one or more of the Republican candidates. Other pollsters do so much more rarely, or only for the odd state here and there.
These are interesting. National match-up polls, for sure, are cool because they give a good idea of the overall mood in the country and the overall viability of the different candidates: which ones do good not just within their party, but in a match-up against the frontrunners of the other side? But in the end of course the race is going to be decided on a state to state level, and more particularly in a dozen or so swing states.
So I've been tracking how Hillary has been doing in these state-level match-up polls for a few months now. First I recorded only how she did against Giuliani, Thompson and Romney, at the time the three frontrunners. In
this post, you can find back two related graphs, for how Hillary did in these match-ups in August/early September and in September/early October. And, well, the results looked very, very good for Hillary.
Now I've started tracking how she does against McCain and Huckabee as well. In the table below, I've paired up the poll results
for November/early December from Survey USA (green), Rasmussen (orange), and Quinnipiac (in blue), for each of the hypothetical match-ups: Hillary vs Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson and Huckabee.
The numbers are listed by state. The numbers you see listed are the margins of 'victory' (in blue) or 'defeat' (in orange) for Hillary. For comparison purposes, the margins of victory/defeat for Kerry against Bush are given on the left.
I think these results are interesting on two levels.
On the one hand, they make visible just how large a shift in political preference is appearing on the horizon - very tentatively, of course - and for now, anyhow - if, at least, the Republicans don't see the light and nominate John McCain.
On the other hand, it shows up striking differences in how the Republican candidates stack up against Hillary.
From the previous tables it was already clear that Giuliani does much better than Fred Thompson, and Romney does outright disastrously. This new table shows Huckabee doing worse still than Romney (for now!); and it shows McCain being clearly the most competitive Republican candidate, which makes it so poignant that the Republicans show little sign of warming up to him yet, outside New Hampshire.
Now I've been very inclined to attribute these differences in how the candidates stack up to name recognition. That doesnt hold up for Giuliani and McCain, because both of those are widely known, so the difference between them would appear to simply show that McCain really has the greater appeal to independents and moderates. But it would, logically, hold for Romney.
Romney is simply much less known than Giuliani or McCain, and thus people are less likely to express a preference for him. Instead, both the number of undecideds and of those choosing Hillary over this unknown quantity are higher, and thus Hillary has a much more positive margin over him than over Rudy or McCain. Once Romney becomes better known too, his numbers will automatically pick up.
That was the theory. But I dont put half as much stock in that explanation anymore, for two reasons:
- Romney has campaigned for over half a year now, and has attracted a fair share of media attention over time. But his numbers show little sign of improving at all. In the August/early September polls, his margins against Hillary were on average 16 percentage points worse than Bush's 2004 margins against Kerry had been. In September/early October, he was doing 15 points worse. In October/early November, it was still 15 points. Now, it's 12 points. There's hardly any improvement at all, despite the cumulative effect of the media coverage that he's gotten would have had on voters' familiarity with him.
- Huckabee started out just as unknown as Romney. As a logical consequence of his relative unknownness, his margins against Hillary in this table are on average 15 percentage points worse than Bush's 2004 margins against Kerry, and worse still than Romney's. But unlike Romney, Huckabee is picking up in these match-up polls very quickly. Take Ohio: last month, as this table shows, the Survey USA poll saw Hillary beating Huckabee by 17 points. Now there have been 3 new polls this month already that are not included in this table yet: a new Quinnipiac poll on New Jersey, and new polls by both Survey USA and Quinnipiac on Ohio. And in those Ohio polls, Hillary now leads Huckabee by just 2 points according to Survey USA, and 7 points according to Quinnipiac. That's a big improvement upon November. So Huckabee's numbers in these match-ups apparently do seem to quickly pick up as his campaign catches the limelight. Which makes Romney's inability over the months to budge his standing against Hillary in much any way look a lot more meaningful.
All of which confirms my hope that Romney will be the Republican nominee...
