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Saturday, April 2, 2016

Low Approval Ratings are a Sign of the Partisan Times

This has been a weird primary in that I find myself agreeing with all kinds of people I never have before. Yesterday I pointed out a curious point regarding personal approval ratings for the candidates.

While the media's favorite meme is how unpopular Hillary is, a new poll shows that it's not just her.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/04/are-candidates-favorables-overrated.html

What's amazing is that the relationship between net personal approval and a candidate seems almost totally inverse. The worse a candidate is doing in this primary the better they're rating. Trump and Cruz are both significantly worse than Hillary.

But even the allegedly pure as the driven snow Bernie Sanders is now negative seven points in approval. Only Kasich who has no chance and no one wastes time attacking is barely up-by one whole point.

Anyway, the unlikely person I agree with this time is Rush Limbaugh who noted the same yesterday. Does everyone, indeed, suck?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/rush-limbaugh-everybody-sucks-221469

Approval ratings may be overrated. The public generally likes you best when you are not a partisan figure fighting for votes. Evidently, the public sees that as somehow 'unseemly.'

Hillary's numbers over 25 years in the public glare have been up and down and back again. She was a negative early in her husband's Presidency but then the public warmed to her-but because she was humiliated publicly over Monica Lewinsky.

What does it tell you about public opinion when it's able to see women postively mostly when they look like victims?

Then during the Obama years as Secretary of State she had very high approval and even GOP voters claimed to see her positively. But you're always most popular at that moment before you put your hat into the ring.

Since she's gotten in her numbers have been battered and are now upside down. At an approval rating of between the high thirties and low forties, her numbers are  actually considerably worse than they ever were in 2008-then her lowest was 48 percent.

So what happened? A few things, I think. One is that maybe the whole GOP attack on Benghazi, emails, and the Clinton Foundation has been effective. The media has certainly worked very hard to amplify these attacks.

But again, look at the other candidates. Trump is in a class by himself in terms of turning huge swaths of the public off. Though Cruz hardly better at negative 28. Even The Bern is now negative seven points.

I think part of it is that we are now in a very hyper partisan age. Obama's numbers now in the low 50s are the equivalent of the low 70s twenty years ago.

Once you become a partisan figure, roughly a third of the public thinks you are the worst human being to walk the planet. Then there are the very impressionable independents who reason that if you are the subject of this much criticism it must be true.

I am curious about Bernie's drop into negative territory. Has he dropped more with independents now or is it that many Democrats are tried of the way he is going after Hillary personally?  

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