Hillary's Gender Challenge

A few weeks ago a had a short post discussing Hillary's challenge as a female presidential candidate. Given her present status as the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination it is probably appropriate to expand on that previous post.

Polls have consistently shown that a significant percentage of the American people will not vote for a woman for President. Gallup, CBS News, Rasmussen and Newsweek have each polled this issue and their results fall between 5% and 17%, with an average of 12%. Additionally, this is the type of issue that will underpoll. Many people will be a little reluctant to admit to a pollster that they wouldn't vote for a woman, as a result they may not tell the pollster the truth. I suspect that the polls have under counted this result by a few percentage points.

By simply extrapolating the number of Presidential voters in 2000 and 2004 you can roughly assume there will be 140,000,000 voted cast in the 2008 Presidential election. If we are conservative and assume that the actual percentage of voters who won't vote for a woman is 8% that would mean a loss of 11,200,000 votes for Hillary right out of the box. If we further assume that 2/3 of these voters are Republicans that still leaves Hillary with a loss of 3,696,000 votes. Keep in mind that the popular vote in the 2000 election was separated by 543,816 votes and the 2004 election was separated by 3,012,499 votes. It is important to note that Presidential elections are not decided by the popular vote, but by the Electoral College. And it is hard to say the effect of this bias on the Electoral College system. I think it would be exaggerated as the election is usually determined by three of four states whose Democrats are blue collar Reagan Democrats and are prone to the bias discussed above.

I understand that the above mentioned polls were based on a generic female candidate and not Hillary. However, given voters high negative opinion of Hillary anyway, these polls don't bode well for her. It will be interesting to see how accurate the polls are for the upcoming primaries, and if they hide an bias against female candidates.

Republican Fundraising Numbers

If you are a die hard Republican you have got to be worried right now. The most recent fundraising figures don't look good.

I will be interested to see what the head to head fundraising numbers look like between the Republican and Democratic presumptive nominees. At this point Hillary's fundraising success is a factor of her position atop the democratic field.

Clinton Gains Teachers Union Endorsement

I am sure this endorsement has been in the works for a long time, but added to the fundraising numbers that were released yesterday, it sure looks like the Clinton machine is starting to roll.

Hillary's Fundraising Surprise

A few months ago Obama hit the big time when he showed he could raise money at least as fast as Hillary. Until that time his was pretty much a vanity candidacy that few really took seriously. Well recent fundraising disclosures show a BIG Hillary advantage in the 3rd quarter. This will come as a severe blow to Obama. While I suspect the youth vote (or nonvote) will stay with Obama, the reliable voters and their money will go to Hillary now. I think this is the beginning of the end of the Obama candidacy. He will certainly make it through most of the primary season and will be a player on the national stage for a long time to come, but he won't be President in 2009. (It will be interesting to see when the mea culpas start from the former Clintonistas who defected.)

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0132284620071002?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Facebook

I read over the weekend (on various other blogs) that someone has made a "Stop Hillary Clinton" facebook page. With 463,740 member and counting it eclipses Hillary's facebook page by 418,802 members. I don't want to read to much into this. I suspect that average facebook users are skewed way younger than typical voters and way, way younger than typical primary voters; however, I am a little surprised by the negative feelings about Hillary among facebook users, many of whom probably don't remember her as an unpopular first lady at all.

Obama

It seems like every few weeks when the conventional wisdom has Hillary walking away with the Democratic nomination there is a slew of stories touting the viability of the Obama campaign. I personally feel that absent some sort of serious scandal Hillary will win going away. Some Dems may flirt with Barack, but in the end the party faithful will go home with the established candidate with party credentials. At this point the Obama campaign reminds me of the Dean campaign less a few points in the polls (remember at one time Dean was the front runner). I think we will see Hillary pull away as the primaries approach and we will see fewer and fewer Obama puff pieces as pundits start to discuss what a Hillary presidency would be like.