Sobering recent data: Lots of Democrats now actively disliking the candidates

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

National polling of Dem voters is becoming more and more consistent, and that is bad news. When polls are jumping all over the place we can hope that they will eventually settle on one nominee or another. Unfortunately, the polls are no longer erratic. They're just split.

Newsweek, Gallup, Rasmussen... all have Obama and Clinton tied in the mid-40s, and not showing much movement.

Those are hard attitudes now. Most people have decided. The problem is that the will of the people is that the people have no discernible will. I take individual poll results with a large grain of salt, but when different polls start showing the same unanticipated effect it says something.

Not long ago, the great majority of Democrats said they were satisfied if the other choice won. (about 75%)

Today, only about 43% of Hillary people have a favorable view of Barack Obama and only about 50% of Obama supporters have a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton. (latest Newsweek and Rasmussen)

Let that settle in and consider what it means... "favorable" is a minimal standard.

That's crazy! I'm not an Obama fan, but I have a favorable view of him. It seems that the average Clinton supporter likes Obama less than I do. And nobody on DU needs to be convinced of the enmity Obama supporters have for Hillary.


There has been a running propaganda battle here about which candidate can rely on the other candidates supporters. "All Hillary's votes will go to Obama, but not visa versa" and, " all Obama votes will go to Hillary, but not visa versa."

Well guess what? The verdict is in. A big chunk of the party actually dislikes Obama, and a big chunk of the party actually dislikes Clinton.

To the best of our knowledge today, Hillary will not get the Obama vote, and Obama will not get the Hillary vote.

Either candidate will lose 15-20% of potential Democratic voters off the top. That's reality. That is where we are.

(I say "potential Democratic votes" to include Dem-leaning independents. Obama is losing a lot of Dems and Clinton is losing a lot of dem-leaning indys. The two effects are pretty close in terms of number of votes. That's why Obama and Clinton poll so close to each other vs. McCain, despite having different bases. And that is why Clinton and Obama edge McCain by roughly the name number of electoral votes in the SUSA 50-state survey, even though they win very different mixes of states.)