Figure 1
About 43% of respondents thought of Clinton in favorable
terms, while only about 29% of respondents felt the same way about Trump. Subtracting out the percentage of respondents
who thought unfavorably about the candidates, Clinton has a net favorable
rating of -12% and Trump has a negative rating of -41%.
Hold your
nose and vote, right?
Wrong.
By focusing
on just these simple ratings, the pundits are missing the real story.
Since at
least 2004, when Karl Rove pulled Republicans out of the woodwork to re-elect
George W. Bush, we have been having “base elections.” Base elections are about
mobilization, not persuasion. Politicians
appeal to people in your own party because there aren’t very many people outside
of their parties who can be persuaded. In
a base election, candidates only call and knock on the doors of people likely
to vote for them. They don’t bother with
anyone else.
With our
current level of political polarization, we should expect that a presidential
nominee will be popular with his or her own partisans, but hated by the other
side. Here is what the favorability
numbers look like when we break the results down by party identification:
Figure 2
Among
Republicans, Donald Trump has a 65% favorability rating and, when you subtract
out the percentage of Republican respondents who thought of Donald Trump in
unfavorable terms, his net favorability among Republicans is 30%.
Clinton
does even better among her co-partisans.
74% of the Democrats surveyed thought of her in favorable terms. Her net favorability rating is 49%.
Considering
only self-identified partisans, the data suggests that the reason both of these
candidates have negative favorability ratings stems largely from the contempt
members of the other party hold for them.
Only 5% of the Democrats had anything nice to say about Donald Trump
while only 11% of the Republicans had anything nice to say about Hillary
Clinton.
Both
candidates should want much higher approval ratings from their bases, But, in understanding these numbers, we should
remember the context. This survey was in
the field just after Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination and before
she’s had a chance to reconcile with the Sanders voters in her own party. And though Trump clinched his nomination
several weeks ago, there is a simmering feud among the wings of the Republican
coalition that may well explode at their convention in July.
What about
Independents? Here’s how people who claim to be Independents think about Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Figure 3
Taking the
data at face value, it appears that Independents don’t much like either Hillary
Clinton or Donald Trump.
The problem
is that independents tend not to be really independent. People who claim to be Independents are often
just as partisan as people who openly admit their party affiliation. Lincoln
Park Strategies, a D.C. public opinion research firm, has calculated
that only about 5% of the electorate doesn’t lean toward either party. These folks are often so ambivalent about
politics that they don’t vote. Without
knowing which way an independent leans, you have to take his or her opinion
with a grain of salt.
To see what
each candidate’s favorability rating is among self-identified partisans and
Independents who are probably partisan leaners, we have to redistribute their
ratings. Here’s how I do it:
First, we
need to know how many survey respondents are in each group. That information wasn’t included in the
results the Washington Post
published, but the Washington Post
was kind enough to let me know that, assigning required weights to conform
their sample to national demographics, 35% of the sample identified as
Democratic, 26% identified as Republican and 37% identified as Independent. To simplify calculations, assume that there
were 1,000 respondents. That would mean
that we start with 350 Democrats, 260 Republicans and 370 Independents.
If Lincoln
Park Strategies is correct, then only 50 of the self-identified independents
are truly independent. That would leave
320 Independents to impute to the two parties.
I assume
that the independent leaners identify with the two parties in the same
proportion as the other respondents.
Since there were 610 self-identified partisans, the 350 self-identified
Democrats amount to 57% (350/610) of the sample while the 260 self-identified
Republicans constitute 43% of the sample.
That would mean that 184 of the Independents lean Democratic while 136
lean Republican.
We know that
among all Independents, Hillary Clinton had a 34% favorability rating while
Donald Trump had a 30% favorable rating.
I attribute all of a candidate’s favorable ratings to the Independents
who lean toward his or her party.
74% of the
self-reported Democrats (259 respondents) rated Hillary Clinton favorably while
34% of the 184 imputed leaners (62 respondents) did so as well. Thus, a total of 321 self-identified
Democrats and imputed Democratic imputed in all rated Hillary Clinton
favorably. With 534 self-identified
Democrats and imputed Democratic leaners, Clinton’s real favorability rating is
about 60% and her net favorability rating is 20%.
65% of
self-identified Republicans (169 respondents) rated Donald Trump favorably
while 30% of the 136 imputed leaners (41 respondents) did so as well. Thus, a total of 210 self-identified
Republicans and imputed Republican leaners in all rated Donald Trump
favorably. With 396 self-identified
Republicans and imputed Republican leaners, Trump’s real favorability rating is
about 53% and his net favorability rating is 6%.
These
partisan favorability ratings aren’t stellar, but they’re not awful either.
Assuming no stumbles, each candidate is likely to improve his or her
favorability rating after Labor Day as people begin to focus on the election
and “come home” to the party with which they are most comfortable.
If that’s
true, then the pundits are telling the wrong story. This election is not a “Stupor Bowl.” It is,
instead, still a political Super Bowl. The real story is about the extent of
our country’s political polarization.
Come Election
Day, most voters will go to the polls to vote for a candidate they happily support. But, unlike a true Super Bowl
in which a team’s supporters hold at least a grudging respect for the opponent,
the data is telling us that voters are holding their candidate’s opponent in
high contempt. They want the other side
thoroughly defeated.
And that
means that on the day after the election, there will be no national healing, no
coming together of political opponents, no honeymoon for the victor. The winners will rejoice. They will see their win as a democratic victory
and a repudiation of the other side.
But, just
as in 2008 and 2012, the losers will doubt the legitimacy of the election and
work to undermine the winner. They’re
also likely to be very fearful about what the new president will do to them and
the country they love.
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