The Electability Curve

I’m once again reading with interest the RealClearPolitics.com averages of opinion polls. A few things emerging over the past month :

Obama is gaining on Hillary, slowly, slowly, in national polls of likely or registered voters but is still 9 points down.

In head-to-head general election polling Clinton remains behind Giuliani and tied with McCain. Obama is at least tied with Giuliani and may be starting to move ahead. Importantly he has moved to a clear lead over McCain. Edwards is very close to Giuliani and McCain. All the leading Democratic candidates would beat Romney hands down.

There appear to be curiously overlapping groups here. The “any credible Democrat” group appears to be good for 43% or so. The “anyone but Hillary group” appears to be holding solid at 45% or so. Weirdly the results won by Obama and Edwards against Giuliani and McCain, as compared to Hillary, appear to show that there are some democrat leaning voters in the “any credible Democrat” group who are prepared to vote Republican just to avoid electing Hillary. Hillary’s continuing lead in the national democrat nomination polling shows that the “anyone but Hillary” group is coming mainly from independents and Republicans but it must include some Democrats as well.

What does this tell us about the road ahead? It’s starting to look like this. If you want to get a Democrat elected President you have two main courses of action from here out. Either find a way to knock the “anyone but Hillary” vote down to below 40% or nominate Obama and/or Edwards, preferably as a joint ticket, with the order not all that important but probably Obama at the top.

It’s still a year out and this is all a long punt at this stage. But, if by late fall there is no improvement in the size of the "anyone but Hillary" vote, and her unfavourables remain anchored at 50% (as they have for the last year) then her electability becomes an urgent issue. If Obama and/or Edwards are still holding or beating the GOP frontrunners at that time then Democrat primary voters should think really hard before voting for Hillary.

It should be said that Hillary’s unfavourables/anyone but her vote is unfair and unreasonable and is the result a successful demonisation campaign. That’s tough and it should be resisted but if, in the end, resistance fails, the cold truth is that this election is too important for the party to ignore electability shortcomings in candidates and we need to look elsewhere.