The poll fronted by the Washington Post today contains some really interesting results. But you wouldn’t know that by reading the article written about it, which focused almost exclusively on the less-that-breaking news that Democrats have what you might call a “trust issue” with Hillary. Here’s how it’s framed: “Most See Dishonesty: Poll Shows Erosion Of Trust in Clinton.”
The poll asked a lot of questions about honesty and trustworthiness, but the proof of this particular claim really stems from a single question: “Please tell me if the following statements apply to Hillary Clinton or not: She is honest and trustworthy,” with a 39-58 yes/no split in the answers. Pretty dramatic, to be sure, especially when you factor in a poll from a month earlier that shows Clinton being deemed honest and trustworthy by a margin of 52-42.
But there’s no other data to contextualize this drop-off. Just this month’s poll and last month’s, which makes it hard to tell if the fall is part of a trend, or an aberration, or even if it’s not the worst she’s done. There’s also no context from how other candidates might have done — or did — when the question was posed about them. The Post has decided to hold “Questions 30 to 35 … for future release” — the Clinton “trust” question was #29 — so perhaps in question #30 Obama so the same drop off in trust, which might say something about the mood of the electorate in general, or maybe his trustworthiness has soared, which would support the idea that trust is an issue for her in particular. If they didn’t ask about Obama’s trustworthiness at all, well, that’s a problem in and of itself.
Yes, the poll did ask about relative trustworthiness, and by that measure, Hillary also does poorly. But, here’s the thing: She has done poorly in relative terms since February of 2007, when she was leading Obama as a presidential candidate by 13 points. Indeed, at that time, she did even worse, trailing Obama at 29 to his 34, before bottoming out in March at 28. (Obama’s seen a steady climb in the margin by which he beats her — though one suspects that has less to do with a growing trust in Obama himself than with the lack of competition for the title “more trustworthy than a Clinton.”)
Even taking as a given that Clinton is, in fact, less trustworthy than other candidates, is it even a problem? Think about it this way: The day after Bill Clinton admitted he lied about the Lewinsky affair, 61 percent told pollsters that they believed he had “tried to mislead” the American public; his job approval rating actually went up. Before he admitted to having an affair, 42 percent of those polled said he was not “honest enough” to be president. After he admitted having an affair, the number rose… by zero: 42 percent said he was not “honest enough” to be president. A lot has changed since 1998, but I think one thing has stayed the same: “Honest enough” to be president is, in fact, “not very honest.”
Evidence for the relative importance of “honesty” in a president is also available in this very poll. Hillary Clinton tanks in the direct honesty question and in relative honesty, but look elsewhere, for instance, to the answers to this question: “Regardless of who you may support, who do you trust more to handle (ITEM) – (Clinton) or (Obama)?”
In “international trade agreements,” on “health care,” and in “the U.S. campaign against terrorism,” Hillary beats Obama. They tie on handling the war in a Iraq, and Barack edges past her by 3 points when it comes to the economy. For someone who isn’t trustworthy, she seems to inspire a fair amount of trust. I say only “a fair amount” because the real story about these numbers is how close they are. Neither candidate completely overwhelms the other when it comes to trust in handling actual issues.
Of the five categories, four put the preference for one candidate over the other within a margin of five — and the margin of error (+/- 3). The one area where one candidate is preferred over the other by numbers outside the margin of error is where Hillary beats Barack: health care (51-41).
If I were writing the headline off of these results in particular — and information turned up by this poll in general — it would not be “Most See Dishonesty,” but “Most See a Campaign.” And not even a particularly divisive or souring one at that: 53 percent see the race as “mostly positive,” 41 see it as negative and that’s with a whopping 84 percent saying they’re playing “close” attention to the race. And, whatever the pundit class says, voters think it’s still a race. Yeah, they think she could pull it off. And they’re the ones who get to decide that, after all.
Beyond the “who do you trust” specifics I just cited, evidence for Hillary’s second chance also stems from the fifty percent of Democrats who say — contra MSM — that the length of the race doesn’t matter. Combined with the 17 percent who say that the long race is helping their party, only the 32 percent have lined up with the wise men who say it hurts. Fifty-five percent think Clinton should stay in the race. Oh, and 53 percent think “the candidate you support win[ning] the nomination, even if the race goes on into the summer” is more important than “the race end[ing] as soon as possible.”
It would be statistically impossible for that 53 percent to be made of up nothing but Hillary supporters (she is still losing to Obama, after all) — one has to conclude that there are Obama supporters who are at least sympathetic to Hillary’s candidacy, and, by extension, that she might just have a chance of winning some of them over. Her chances of doing that are even better if one believes another trend made clear by the poll: “strength and experience” are — despite what you’ve heard — really more important to voters than a “new direction.” The split between the two priorities in the most recent poll is 49-43, and “new direction” has only come out on top once since last July, and then it was by one point.
Hillary can also take heart in the 37 percent who don’t have a problem with superdelegates picking “the candidate who they think is best,” though — depending on how things go in the next few weeks — she might feel even better about the 46 percent that think superdelegates should vote for whoever is ahead in the popular vote total.
Pundits were wrong with they crowned her inevitable last summer. Now they’ve declared her “impossible.” And they could be wrong again.