Another vote for ‘means nothing’. The question is poorly worded. A hypothesis is always a weak question and the counter is to make it resemble the likely realities. Don’t ask about some abstract evaluation.
On election day the choice is Clinton and Giuliani (for argument’s sake). Pose a question that resembles that reality and your prediction approaches reliability.
I would never trust a single poll if it can be avoided. (As I said elsewhere on this board recently, I’m even more iffy about Zogby and ARG than I am of most polling outfits.)
Anyway, here’s one from WaPo/ABC (scroll down) for comparison purposes:
Can’t make the coding work out nicely, but at September’s end, they have 41% who’d definitely not vote for Hillary, down from 45% in April. The comparable September numbers for Edwards and Obama are 43% and 39%, respectively.
And for Rudy, Fred, Mitt, and McCain, they’re 44%, 57%, 54%, and 45%, respectively.
The two polls are clearly not in agreement about Hillary, Fred, and Mitt.
I think it definitely means something. I’ve said for years the Dems would be stupid to risk Joe America voting for either a woman or a black in 2008. People can be PC and say all they want that they would vote for either , but when they get in booth, you may see different. I don’t think its a lock that the Dems can put anyone out there and expect to win, especially if you have a Republican thats not in any way affiliated with Bush or his regimes policies. I say stick with a regular old white guy in 2008, and then mabye in 2012 after four years of change, you try for the minority.
Oh, and Obama is in the bottom three of candidates people would definitely not vote for? Yeah right, I believe that one- pull the other one, it has bells on it. A study should be done on how people won’t admit to being racist when answering polls. :rolleyes:
Yeah, but how many Republicans are going to vote for Ron Paul? The rest have refused to repudiate Bush on the war, tax cuts for the rich or health care. The only issue they criticize him about is immigration, and even that doesn’t get mentioned by the top tier very often.
I suppose it means roughly as much as the approval ratings for Bush or for Congress. Those aren’t for “likely voters” exclusively either.
I would imagine the percentage of Dopers who would never vote for any Republican for President exceeded 80% in 2004, but Bush managed to overcome his negatives somehow. 
Regards,
Shodan
According to this, the second poll has a margin of error of +/- 1.0%; that of the earlier poll is not mentioned.
1% MOE??
According to my thumbnail calculations, you’d need a sample size of ~9600 to get that MOE. Either they’re spending a LOT of money on this poll, or one has to worry about the methodology.
I’d never completely trust even a combination of polls. They are quite often inconclusive and in my lifetime there have been many Presidential elections where the polling data available to the general public prior to election night put both candidates within the margin of error of one another, so they were of limited predictive value.
Here is an interesting article from TIME, written during the 1980 election season. It’s interesting how badly the polls serve as predictors of the way elections will go in the primaries.
I really didn’t like John Edwards but I voted for him. I’m not sure whether you consider that to be on point or not.
I am somewhere between not liking Hillary and really not liking her. However, if she is the Democratic candidate, I will most likely vote for her.
Does it even make any sense to ask someone who they would NEVER vote for? It’s one thing to ask who they don’t plan on voting for, but why ‘never?’ What if it’s three elections from now, and in the meantime Hillary Clinton personally dragged your ass out of a burning building, and the only other candidate is running on a ‘Leave no child unsold to Bolivia’ platform? ‘Never’ covers a lot.
[QUOTE=Wee BairnI’ve said for years the Dems would be stupid to risk Joe America voting for either a woman or a black in 2008. [/QUOTE]
The odd thing is, I don’t see Obama’s race being much a problem. I’m sure Colin Powell would have been electable and I think Obama may be electable. And, for me, the issue with Hillary is only tangentially related to her sex. It’s her reputation that torpedoes her.
I do think America is ready to elect a woman or a black president. I really don’t think that’s the issue here (especially since Obama doesn’t come off as “black” as, say, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.) I think Hillary has to overcome over a decade of her name being sullied in the public discourse.
But, then again, Vegas has got her as the favorite for 2008, with Giuliani close behind.
I think he’s plenty black for many Americans, even if they won’t admit it in a survey. I find all these questions (Is America ‘Ready’ for a Black/Female President?) so incredibly sad and embarrassing for the nation. To ignore their campaigns and wonder solely about their biology and skin color- will she menstruate on some important papers? Will he be refused admission to some restaurants while on the campaign trail? Worse still, if one of them does get elected and screws up, it’ll be like ‘See, this is what happens when a non-white male runs the country. Except for those who screwed up.’
Who is going to beat her? I mean, sure Reagan would win again, but he’s both dead and has had two terms. 
It doesn’t matter how unpopular Hillary is, if the GOP candidate is twice as unpopular. It’s a race, whoever wins gets the prize, and “none of the above” can’t win.
I guess this is what bothers me, the hope that our candidate is less less popular than their candidate. We really shouldn’t be banking on the Republicans to lose the election. I think the Democrats sort of assumed that with Kerry running as more of a “not-Bush” candidate, and I don’t want to see that again with Clinton running as a “not-a-Republican” candidate.
Even though I’m in on the bet that the Democrats will take the White House in 2008, there is no election so sure that the Democrats can’t screw it up.
The difference is that if you don’t like her, you won’t vote for her and possibly not vote at all, but if you hate her, you’ll make damn sure to vote against her.
They might not vote for Hilary, but at least a few extra % will vote for the ticket with Obama as her VP. I think that combo would sail into office.
That doesn’t follow. Why would someone not vote, just because they don’t like Hillary?
Well you didn’t include the full quote. What I was alluding to is that merely disliking a candidate may not get someone into a voting booth to vote for the competition. However, the hatred that Hillary brings out in some voters would do just that. Instead of none of the above it will be anybody but Hillary.
Although your second point is absolutely true, Hillary has mostly lost popularity due to the GOP hate machine, which has been turned full blast on her for a decade now or more. (With a brief respite when Obama edged Hillary out in the polls, so they turned it on him.) The hatred has no rational basis, so there’s no trying to beat it by nominating a non-hated candidate, whoever is nominated will become the target of the hate machine. If the Dems nominated the most blue-dog Dixiecrat in the South, with politics slightly to the right of Dick Cheney, the GOP hate machine would still churn out the propaganda.
Well, true - if the polls say the race is too close to call, then it’s too close to call. There isn’t a whole lot that can be done about that. But that’s not the fault of the polls, anymore than it’s the fault of my Honda that I can’t race it at Indy.
I thought this article was, well, out of date. If you compare their stories of bad polling of primaries, with how perfectly the daily tracking polls caught Kerry’s and Edwards’ rise in Iowa in 2004, it makes you realize how far the polling business has come in the past quarter-century.