ASKED IN A POLL TAKEN December 6-7 by Yankelovich Partners for Time and CNN how they would vote if the 1996 presidential election “were being held today,” 50 percent of respondents said they would support Bill Clinton, just 32 percent Bob Dole. The average of recent polls has Clinton ahead by 10-12 points. What should we make of this? Should Republicans in general, and Dole backers in particular, be worried?
Unfortunately for those who want things neat and simple, the answer is at once yes and no. Let’s look at the no side first.
One of the enduring mysteries of modern politics is why otherwise sensible people allow themselves to be yanked around by incredibly soft poll numbers. An election isn’t being held “today.” For the bulk of the population who, happily, aren’t caught up in the great game of politics, there simply is no need at this point to think much at all about a vote that won’t come for 11 months. For perhaps half the public, answers to the hypothetical vote question are now exceedingly tentative.
We have loads of examples from past campaigns of misleading early trial heats. A Gallup poll taken January 4-6, 1980, for example, found Jimmy Carter leading Ronald Reagan by 62-33 percent. This sounding was taken just two months after staffers of the U.S. embassy in Teheran were taken hostage, and many Americans wanted to express solidarity with their beleaguered president. But polls taken throughout the first three months of 1980 continued to suggest that the president was well ahead.
That was absolute nonsense. Lots of other data available at the time told a very different story — in particular, that a large majority of the public saw Carter as a failed president and wanted to vote him out at the next election. He was, nonetheless, thought to be decent and earnest while Ronald Reagan, his eight years as governor of California notwithstanding, was still something of an unknown to much of the country.
The important thing to understand is that Reagan never actually trailed Carter by 30 percentage points. The concreteness suggested by those poll numbers was illusory. Similarly, Bob Dole does not actually trail Bill Clinton by 18 points today.
Remember the stir created in May 1988 when polls seemed to say that Michael Dukakis had opened a wide lead over George Bush? The Gallup survey of May 13- 15 put Dukakis ahead 54-38 percent among registered voters. It even suggested that the Massachusetts governor was up 9 points in the South! A July 22-24 Gallup poll found Dukakis ahead by a similar margin nationally (54-37 percent) and among most social groups.
It’s not that there was “something wrong” with the polls cited above or with th: dozens of others at the time that got similar results. The pollsters had drawn their samples well and framed the hypothetical vote question properly. There were reasons why many voters who hadn’t focused on the presidential race felt some dissatisfaction with the: Republican nominee, or some attraction to the Democrat.
But again, much of the electorate hadn’t “decided,” even tentatively, to back Dukakis over Bush. At every point during the year, the underlying structure of the election pointed to a comfortable Bush victory. That is, the public’s verdict on Reagan’s eight years was positive, and the country’s economy was doing well. The philosophic realignment that has seen majorities increasingly skeptical of claims that more government is the answer was proceeding apace. Bush was in fact a respectable candidate, and Dukakis far from superman.
Polls can be helpful guides to the factors shaping voters’judgments. But extracting this value takes work. Poll trial heats are tempting because they suggest a ready answer to how a race is going. Prior to the nominating conventions, though, these numbers are soft. They’re even softer now, in the television age, which has accelerated changes of mood. The sophisticated poll watcher in 1996 should focus on how swing groups view the incumbent. Do they really want to reelect him? Beyond this, where is the electorate on the big issues that have been driving a major political realignment for roughly a quarter of a century?
Yet, if there are compelling reasons not to take the current Clinton-Dole trial heats too seriously, the numbers shouldn’t be completely dismissed.
A majority of the electorate considers Bill Clinton a “moderate failure” as president. He has not satisfied this majority on character grounds, and despite his efforts to scramble back to the political center, the centerpiece of his domestic agenda of the past three years was an effort to expand government’s reach massively in health care. Still, it’s far from certain that voters will turn him out next November. The Republican nominee must make a sale.
Dole has yet to do this. What’s more, the polls provide no indication that he is making even modest headway. Ideologically, he is very close to the center as understood by the public at large. He is seen — because it’s true – – to be able and experienced. He does not, however, command enthusiastic support in any substantial part of the electorate, including rank-and-file Republicans. What should trouble his backers most is that he hasn’t yet shown swing voters he can provide what they are looking for in their next president: a compelling vision for the country that starts :from the desire to curb government but extends far beyond it. Our deepest national anxieties involve what may be called, in broad terms, the moral dimension.
So, yes, it’s early, and it’s foolish to hang on the trial-heat numbers. But the latter, along with other data, do show that President Clinton, while down, isn’t out; and that Senator Dole, while well ahead for the Republican nomination, has done little to rally the country.
Everett Carll Ladd is president of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
