'Tis the Season to Poll
By Debbie HoltzIt’s a bit of a stretch for the Star Ledger to portray Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) as having "surprisingly weak support from women" based on the new Rutgers-Eagleton Poll.
The poll actually shows
Clinton leading by a 9 percent margin among women in a head-to-head horse race against former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Not bad 15 months before the general election..."a lifetime in politics." So why is anyone trying to make apples of an oranges comparison by pointing out the double digit leads held by Al Gore and John Kerry among women in 2000 and 2004? After all, Gore (8%) and Kerry (10%) held roughly the same gender advantage over their opponent just months before the state's primary. How about the fact that Gore’s gender advantage (4%) in a match-up with 2000 Republican presidential candidate John McCain was less than half the margin now held by Clinton over one of her potential 2008 candidates. Hmmm…sounds like the former first lady is already making headway with NJ women voters even when she is pitted against the GOP’s momentary favorite son in the Garden State. And while “more women have an unfavorable view of Clinton (36 percent) than of Giuliani (28 percent),” it’s really a small difference in a sample with a margin of error of about 4.7 percent. Stated another way, “Roughly equal proportions of women view the two favorably...” Weak???Here's my problem with this report: The Star Ledger should have presented the numbers straight up and let readers draw their own conclusions, or else conspicuously labeled the report as "Analysis." The New York Times has adopted a policy of denoting any pieces that contain opinion.
It's a policy worth emulating.
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Eagleton Poll
I don't have a problem so much with the poll trying to get a catchy story but I have some issues with this particular story. To Eagleton's credit, the poll results were kind of vanilla so they sort of had to make something out of nothing but if they were going to make gender the main focus, they should have tried to chase down WHY Clinton might have less of a lead among women. One of the reasons, as the poll even notes, may be that voters are for the most part saying gender doesn’t matter (which, generally speaking would mean we are making progress as a society) at this point, so maybe it has to do with issues. Perhaps it has to do with the gap between Clinton and Giuliani’s stance on abortion, which is MUCH closer than the gap between Bush and Gore/Kerry’s stance (which might explain why McCain and Gore/Kerry were only 4 points apart). Additionally, re: Clinton’s unfavorables are ALWAYS high, and she is just as polarizing among women as she is among men, so that should come as no surprise that she gets higher unfavorables than Giuliani. IMHO, one of the most interesting things about this poll is the fact that 1) Clinton still beats Giuliani in a head to head matchup in his backyard (I know she has been here for a few years, but this is still his area) and 2) the fact that Giuliani is so close in a Democratic state is probably due to a) his terror credentials/emotional connection to him re: 9/11 and b) his social progressivism.
--Saint Joe--
Full Disclosure??
Debbie, we are still waiting to hear your full disclosure. Who paid your salary from Trenton and DC politicians??
yeah what Fan said
Fan raises a good question. Oh, and when is that trooper going to be charged? More than 25 miles over the limit, caused an accident with serious injuries--I would still be trying to find my way around the courts.