Reports of Hillary Clinton's Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Here's some stupid for lunch.

Hair, Nose, Mouth, Lip, Cheek, Earrings, Hairstyle, Chin, Forehead, Eyebrow,
Scott OlsonGetty Images

The staff here at the Café is fascinated by the big buzz tout les 'Toobz this morning. It comes from the new CBS News/YouGov poll showing that Bernie Sanders is ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton in Iowa and running away over the far horizon from her in New Hampshire. The staff shrugs its shoulders and wanders off to wait on the lunch rush.

One major difference right now is enthusiasm: Sanders is generating it and Clinton is not. Seventy-eight percent of Sanders voters in New Hampshire, and 63 percent of his voters in Iowa, say they enthusiastically support him, while just 39 percent of Clinton's backers in New Hampshire and 49 percent in Iowa say they enthusiastically support her.

On-line polls, even well-wrought ones, are inherently dubious. On-line polls conducted in September when nobody really votes for anyone until February are the approximate equivalent of throwing rubber-tipped darts at a cast-iron dartboard. And, not for nothing, but why is Joe Biden even in this polling model? He's not running. The odds are no better than 50-50 that he will, despite the fondest dreams of the members of the campaign press and the major news operations that employ them. Why not throw Mitt Romney into the Republican survey?

Already we've had Quinnipiac produce some curious poll results regarding HRC.

Because of the way the results were reported, Republicans and Republican leaners comprised 45% of the reported responses, while Dems and Dem-leaners made up only 36%. Again, this analysis still leaves out a good 20% of the overall responses (ones which were mentioned one time or less), but when you consider the responses in context, it's pretty clear that the negative responses were overwhelmingly from Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, and that there's a much higher degree of descriptive unanimity among them.

Nobody's saying that the Clinton campaign isn't stuck in the mud a bit right now. But the diagnoses of imminent catastrophe seem premature.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below