Pew must pay their pollsters a lot to ask questions like these! Talk about assertions for which there's no empirical evidence!
BobW
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [so just like we've got Bush 41 and 43, will we have
> Clinton 42 and 44?]
>
>
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1007/6644.html>
>
> Clinton would cream Giuliani, poll finds
> By: David Paul Kuhn
> Oct 31, 2007 04:40 PM EST
> Updated: November 1, 2007 09:03 AM EST
>
> Republican popularity at its lowest level in a
> generation, huge study
> by Pew reveals.
>
> One year before voters go to the polls to select the
> next president,
> the Republican Party is as weak as it has been in a
> generation, a
> detailed new poll suggests.
>
> In a hypothetical match-up between Hillary Clinton
> and Rudy Giuliani,
> bloc after bloc of traditionally Republican voters
> break for Clinton:
>
> She wins the South.
>
> She polls evenly with voters who attend church at
> least once a week.
>
> She splits families with a household income above
> $100,000.
>
> She loses rural voters and men — but only by a
> narrow margin.
>
> All are constituencies Republicans have dominated
> for decades; George
> W. Bush won each by double-digit margins.
>
> The findings from The Pew Research Center for the
> People & the Press
> remain preliminary, considering even the primaries
> are still two
> months off.
>
> But Pew questioned an unusually large number of
> voters to try to
> paint the most accurate picture possible of where
> the presidential
> contest stands today.
>
> Should the race continue down its current
> trajectory, the poll finds
> Clinton defeating Giuliani by eight percentage
> points.
>
> Other recent polls, however, have placed Giuliani
> ahead of Clinton in
> a head-to-head race. But those polls predict Clinton
> would beat Fred
> Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney.
>
>
> Frank's move ties lobbyists in knots
> The angry voter: Bad news for Dems
> The Congressional Compatibility Quiz
> And Barack Obama would defeat Giuliani — though
> narrowly — according
> to at least four polls taken in October.
>
> In fact, Democrats hold a marked advantage over
> Republicans in the
> eyes of voters.
>
> In July 2004, the Democratic Party had a slight lead
> as the party
> “better able to manage the federal government” and
> as the party that
> is “more honest and ethical.”
>
> Today Democrats lead both categories by double-digit
> margins.
>
> By even larger margins, Democrats are seen as the
> party “more
> concerned about people like me” (by 29 percentage
> points) and the
> party best able to bring about “needed change” (by
> 22 percentage
> points).
>
> Other polling has also showed that for the first
> time in decades
> Americans now see the two parties as equally
> qualified to face down
> national security threats — erasing the “security
> advantage”
> Republicans have long relied on.
>
> Republican insiders dismiss the findings as “largely
> irrelevant”
> because they come so far before Election Day.
>
> “I don’t take comfort in any of the numbers that are
> out there right
> now, but I also don’t put much stock in them because
> it is so
> premature,” said Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), the
> number-three Republican
> in the House.
>
> Pew’s pollsters agree that as well as Democrats are
> positioned today,
> much could change in the next year.
>
> t’s very early in the race, and we would all be
> shocked if the South
> went for Clinton,” said Michael Dimock, Pew’s
> associate director of
> research.
>
> One factor the poll “reflects is the lack of focus
> among Republicans
> right now,” he said.
>
> That lack of focus is visible when partisans are
> asked to rate their
> own political camp.
>
> Only 36 percent of Republicans and
> Republican-leaning independents
> say the GOP “does an excellent or good job” of
> “standing up for
> traditional GOP positions” on issues like reducing
> the size of
> government, cutting taxes, and promoting
> conservative social issues.
>
> That’s a decline of 25 points since July 2004. In
> fact, it’s the
> lowest Republican rating for the GOP since Pew began
> tracking the
> issue in 2000.
>
> If it turns out to be a subway race between Giuliani
> and Clinton, Pew
> further found that two-thirds of Republicans say
> their vote for the
> Republican would be more accurately described as a
> vote “against
> Clinton” and “not for Giuliani.”
>
> Yet, as Dimock notes, “Republican enthusiasm and
> engagement could
> really turn and that’s the big unknown at this
> point.”
>
> Democrats do not have a significantly better view of
> their party than
> Republicans do of the GOP, but Democrats have long
> been skeptical of
> their tribe.
>
> Republicans, however, have become “increasingly
> negative,” as Pew
> puts it, about their party.
>
> And they are falling behind in the party loyalty
> stakes, Pew
> interviews of some 20,000 Americans this year have
> found.
>
> About a third of voters call themselves Democrats
> and a quarter call
> themselves Republicans — but when independents’
> leanings are added to
> the mix, roughly half of Americans lean Democratic
> and only 36
> percent lean Republican.
>
> That Democratic advantage in party identity is
> larger than at any
> time since tracking began in 1990.
>
> Bush’s poor approval ratings are a factor.
>
> His approval rating has dropped from around 50
> percent in October
> 2003 to about 30 percent today.
>
> That is roughly equal to Jimmy Carter's ratings at
> the low point of
> the 1979 energy crisis and Richard Nixon's in the
> worst days of
> Watergate.
>
> Additionally, the unpopular war in Iraq, the lack of
> a clear
> Republican front-runner and dismay among some
> conservatives about the
>
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