Over the past few months, among close watchers of 2008 polls, it has become conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton performs better in national primary preference polls without Gore included the question than with Gore included in the question. One of the reasons this has become conventional wisdom is simply that it is true. In the polls taken over the past three months that include samples both of the entire Democratic field with Gore and of the entire Democratic field without Gore,
nine out of ten times Hillary Clinton has a larger lead in the samples without Gore. Note that I am not including three-candidate polls in this survey, because such polls also remove several other candidates besides Gore, and I want to measure only how Gore supporters break.
The primary reason for this is that both Clinton supporters and Gore supporters are, in my estimation, disproportionately drawn from low-information voters who are less engaged with the campaign. Now, this is not to say that there are not hard-core Clinton and Gore supporters, as they most certainly are a decent number of both. It just means that there are fewer hard-core Gore and Clinton supporters as a percentage of their overall supporters in national primary polls. This is especially true for Gore, who only received 4% support among Democrats in
the Hotline-Diageo open ended poll taken three weeks ago (Clinton, Edwards and Obama combined for 57%), and 1% support among
the open-ended, highly engaged Democratic preference poll taken by Pew two months ago (Clinton, Edwards and Obama combined for 30%). When people have to be prompted to vote for you in a poll, you know your supporters are both soft and of the low-information variety.
However, despite our conventional poll-watching wisdom, something interesting is happening among Gore supporters. While they still favor Clinton, her advantage among Gore supporters in national primary polls is not nearly as large as it once was. The first seven polls of the sort described in the first paragraph show 500 Gore supporters breaking 45% for Clinton, 13% each for Obama and Edwards, and the rest either supporting someone else or being unsure. By way of contrast, the three most recent polls, which include about 235 Gore supporters, show Clinton receiving 34%, Obama pulling in 21%, Edwards pulling in 19%, and the rest being either supporting another candidate or being unsure. Certainly, the margin of error could be playing a role in producing these results, and it could also simply be a temporary bump, but then again it could also be a statistically significant shift away from Clinton among low-information Gore supporters. Across the latest national polls from Gallup, ABC-WaPo, and CNN, Clinton's once commanding advantage among Gore supporters has become fairly negligible. Now, her second place lead among Gore supporters increases her lead by an average of only 2%.
Assuming for the moment that this shift is real, what are the implications for the Democratic nomination campaign? First, it shows that Clinton's lead among low-information is shrinking, which means that
the inflated Clinton poll theory might be slowly becoming irrelevant. If Clinton no longer does substantially better among low-information voters than she does among high-information voters, then the window to test the theory may already have disappeared. It would also mean that Clinton's lead will keep becoming smaller, but also become more solid as time moves forward.
Second, it probably does not bode well for Gore's entry into the campaign.
Extremely thin news reports in conservative English newspapers notwithstanding, I have always thought his entry was highly unlikely. If his supporters no longer disproportionately come at Clintons' expense, then even if he entered Gore probably would not start the campaign in the lead (and possibly not even in second place). If he doesn't start the race in front, it is hard to imagine that he would want to enter at all, given that he would already face a significant monetary and organizational disadvantage, on top of a polling disadvantage, to multiple candidates. What would be the point of a late entry if his odds of winning the nomination are low, especially given that a defeat in the 2008 primaries would end any future chance of winning the nomination? Even if you believe the "Gore would enter to stop Clinton from winning" rumors, considering the shift of his supporters away from Clinton, his entry would not even accomplish much on that front. Further, taking into account the activist, media, monetary and other resource drain Gore's entry would create for all the other candidates, a late Gore entry might even increase Clinton's chances of winning the nomination, as the resulting structural problems for other top tier candidates like Edwards and Obama would far outweigh their meager two point net gain on Clinton in national polls.
As a final note,
the article in the Daily Torygraph about a few insiders being on board with a Draft Gore movement is truly wretched. As a person with a functioning brain, I actually found these two paragraphs offensive (emphasis mine):
One of his former campaign team said: "I was asked whether I would be available towards the end of the year if I am needed. They know he has not ruled out running and if he decides to jump in, he will have to move very fast."
"He hasn't asked them to do this, but nor has he told them not to."
Um, so Gore is on board with everything his staffers do secretly in their free time, unless he explicitly tells them otherwise? And why is it even remotely news that a few insiders are on board with the Draft Gore campaign? Several thousand grassroots progressive are also on board with it, so it would actually be news if no insiders whatsoever were on board with it. It reminds me of when I was in England, and the Torygraph claimed that former Labour leader
Paul Michael Foot was a KGB informant.
To be perfectly frank, I think the continued speculation on a possible Gore run is based on some of the most utterly flimsy rumors and word play I have seen fuel almost any American political story in recent years (and that is saying a lot). It strikes me as basically trying to accomplish the same structural drain (money, activists, media) on Edwards, Obama and all other non-Clinton candidates that an actual Gore entry would accomplish. Either that, or it is simply the media trying to inject a wrinkle into a story that will help them get ratings, even though they know it isn't actually news. The difference in the quality of journalism surrounding speculation on potential celebrity divorces and speculation of a possible Gore run is minimal, at best.
Now, with that said, if Gore did run, I would give him a long look. But he ain't gonna run.
Update:
Gore camp completely denies all elements of the Torygraph's story.
