March 18, 2019

Everybody beats Trump in Wisconsin, according to a new Emerson poll — everybody except Amy Klobuchar and — gasp! — Kamala Harris.

Here's how it looks at Real Clear Politics (click image to enlarge and clarify):



Klobuchar only gets a tie. Okay. But Harris?! All those others best Trump but Kamala Harris — who I've been made to feel is the most likely candidate — only ties?!

When the Democratic candidates are pitted against each other, Sanders and Biden are way out ahead, with 39% and 24%, respectively. Harris lags miserably at 5%.

66 comments:

traditionalguy said...

Kammie seems low energy. Maybe she is worn out from a life of California corruption maneuvers.

Wince said...

Emerson is an art school.

Dave Begley said...

Harris will actually have to work on her feet to get this job.

AllenS said...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't The Crooked Hillary supposed to beat Trump according to the polls at the time?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Wisconsin won't choose an accomplished Woman of Color over known white supremacist and confirmed old white man Donald Trump??

Seems like an ugly state. Shameful!

traditionalguy said...

Klubcar is still feisty and moving up fast. She just started real far back. Unless the Dem owned media cuts her down quickly she may be this horse race’s Seabiscuit.

iowan2 said...

Polls 1 year out, and then well within the margin of error. (when the whole concept is nothing but error)

Polls are commissioned by the media to push the narrative they bought.

Polls take 48 hours before the 2016 election gave President Trump no path to victory. Polls 1 year before a primary? Reading the future in a babies diaper will be more accurate.

Sally327 said...

I think Kamala is right where she needs to be pollwise in a midwestern state that wouldn't really know anything about her. I wonder what Barack Obama's numbers were in Wisconsin in early 2007. Maybe higher than that because of the proximity to Illinois but I doubt he was flying all that high in that polls at that point.

M Jordan said...

Trump will win Wisconsin. The Upper Midwest has changed its color from Rust to Red.

Leland said...

Perhaps Wisconsin either wants real socialism, and if it can't get it; then it rather sit out and let the current capitalist system fail under Trump and the GOP.

Kevin said...

I would think this is due to there just being a ton of not very well known women who are pretty much clones of each other who are running and who who nobody can tell apart yet. Differentiation will settle in the more we get to know and distinguish what is horrific about one of them as opposed to what is horrific about the other.

Florence said...

I keep seeing high Biden numbers everywhere -- how much of that is nostalgia for Obama? Or simply name recognition that would get brought down to earth if he actually enters the race (when oppo research would start dumping on him from the other campaigns).

Gretchen said...

Got to love that after all the racial and gender pandering the old white men are the front runners.

Anonymous said...

It's early, and we're still cruising on name-recognition from the last round. I seem to remember Giulliani and Rick Perry and Scott Walker having good polls, until they didn't.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I think Trump is vulnerable. (In WI and everywhere)
After years of total media bombardment, HE IS.
But, do old polls on the run up to the 2016 election compare? Wasn't Hillary in a strong lead against Trump for a long time?

M Jordan said...

Trump’s bully pulpiting of GM’s Mary Barra in Lordstown, Ohio, is a microcosm of what’s happening in the Red Belt (formerly known as the Rust Belt). Even if he doesn’t pound Ms. Barra into submission, Trump wins. He fights for the Working Man. That message wins him Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all over again.

rightguy said...

Emerson's final poll for 2016/Wisconsin was Clinton 48% & Trump 42%. Their final national poll was Clinton in an "electoral landslide".

Amadeus 48 said...

Yeah, it looks like Biden. Bernie? He's too old. We need someone young and fresh like Biden. He's only 76--he'll be 78 in 2020. Trump doesn't stand a chance. He's doomed. What's he ever done for us?*

*Except for the low unemployment, especially among black and Hispanic Americans, the high stock market, the new business formations, the flatter tax rates, the renewed commitment to national defense, the Supreme Court picks, the federal court picks, the antagonism towards the regulatory state, the prison reform. Nah, Trump has been totally ineffective, and he's going to pay for it.

Butkus51 said...

Its amazing how much money is spent on polls and they mean NOTHING.

Ray - SoCal said...

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

British prime minister Benjamin Disrael

As passed on by Mark Twain

Polls I question, and don't get excited much by, since there is a lot of sampling bias. I view it as a nothing burger.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Florence said...I keep seeing high Biden numbers everywhere -- how much of that is nostalgia for Obama?

I thought about that too, with this twist: who would/will Obama endorse? You have to believe that whoever Obama decides to back, if signaled early enough in the primary, will walk away with the Dem nomination, no? It'd be odd for Obama to not back Biden, but there's already a lot of push for new, further-Left ideas and new (non-old white man) candidates and we all know how much Obama craves being "on the right side of history."

I am continually amused by the complete amnesia surrounding ACA/Obamacare that the Democrat candidates and the Media generally keep displaying. Everyone's happy to talk about how crappy the healthcare system is and how we need either Medicare For All or single payer but never in the context of "we JUST told you a huge overhaul we recommended was necessary and we told you all sorts of things for several years about how great that massive change will be fore everyone...but I guess we were wrong since now we're saying everything sucks again and we need even BIGGER changes that we promise will make things EVER BETTER THIS TIME!"

The saddest part is that any normal candidate could easily make that uncomfortable fact difficult for almost any Democrat to deal with...but Trump is probably incapable of forcing that point/making that argument.

I mean, I get that lots of the voter enthusiasm this time will be from young people, but does no one remember waaaaay back to 9 or 10 years ago?! It's bizarre.

roesch/voltaire said...

I'll take a tie, remember at this stage of the game Scot Walker was the leading Republican candidate.

Francisco D said...

I keep seeing high Biden numbers everywhere -- how much of that is nostalgia for Obama? Or simply name recognition

At this point in time, it is mostly name recognition.

You would be surprised at how many people have only a cursory knowledge of the candidates and their positions.

The poll should tell us how many people refused to answer or did not know who the candidates were.

Hagar said...

Re Trump and Lordstown, MSNBC has real winner up this morning with a CNN report that the brave mayor of Lordstown invites Trump to take a hike because, roughly, "closing the Lordstown plant is between GM and the UAW, and if we decide to close the plant, 'we' will regardless of what Mr. Trump thinks about it."

How crazy is that?

tcrosse said...

It doesn't look good for Jill Stein. None of the likely Democrat nominees this time are so awful that Democrats couldn't bring themselves to vote for them, even against Trump.

Bob Boyd said...

Don't count Klovenhoof out just yet. She's still in the salad days of her bid for the White House.

Hagar said...

Anyone remember what the GM Lordstown labor problems were about back n the ' 80's?

M Jordan said...

“You have to believe that whoever Obama decides to back, if signaled early enough in the primary, will walk away with the Dem nomination, no?”

You’re tag question “No” got it right. Check out Obama’s endorsements success from Stacey Abrams to Mini-me (Maryland) to anti-Brexit, for God’s sake. The guy has a terrible record in endorsement success.

M Jordan said...

Bob Boyd: Klovenhoof.

Ha! I’ll be stealing that one.

Bob Boyd said...

Ha! I’ll be stealing that one.

I stole it myself from a commenter here, forget who. Starts with a K, I think.

wildswan said...

"The poll should tell us how many people refused to answer or did not know who the candidates were."

Yeah, and this weakness probably means more candidates still to come. No Democrat left behind.

Bruce Hayden said...

So far, in my mind, there are a bunch of dour older women with varying degrees of intersectionality, but nothing to really distinguish themselves from each other. Mostly back bench Senators with zip in Executive experience, hoping to ride their XX chromosomes into the White House. You can at least tell the guys apart: Slo Joe Biden, the gaffomatic, with his inappropriate use of his hands. Crazy Bernie, even crazier this time around. Beto, looking a bit like the reincarnation of RFK, but with a skateboard and no resume. And Spartacus. Oh, and a couple others who don’t really register. I think that a year from now, the race will be down to one of the guys and one of the dour feminists. If it is a three way race, I would expect that the one outnumbered by the opposite sex will win the nomination. My vote right now would be Spartacus versus Kammie. Will be interesting.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Biden taking a lead tells us something. He's not that racial of a leftist.

Clues.

run Howard, run.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

M Jordan said...You’re tag question “No” got it right. Check out Obama’s endorsements success from Stacey Abrams

But we're talking about the Democratic primary here. Abrams won the primary! It's hilarious that she doesn't agree she clearly lost the general...but she just as clearly won her primary (she beat Evans something like 75-25).

If things go as they normally do then a heavy hitter like Obama is likely to not endorse any single Dem candidate early in the primary. My what-if, though, wonders what would happen if he did--if he strongly backed Biden and said "what this country needs is a return to the good times when Joe & I fixed things" or something similar; wouldn't that be tough to beat? Many of the current Dem candidates are appreciably further to the Left than Obama, but it's also true that Obama during his actual presidency was appreciably further Left than he was as a Senator and presidential candidate.

My question is whether the woke Left is too far Left now to be swayed by Obama endorsing Biden and arguing for a return of the policies and ideas of his presidency. It'd be an undeniable sign of the shift of the Dem party if such an endorsement was not enough to make Biden win the primary easily (Obama still being extremely popular with Dem voters as far as I know)...and frankly if Obama feels he CAN'T endorse Biden and instead endorses someone further to the Left instead that'd also be an interesting sign!

Now all of that said it'd take more courage to endorse early than I expect Obama to have--it'd risk tarnishing his legacy and/or good name with some large portion of the Left and Democrat voters generally. But it's fun to speculate anyway!

Xmas said...

Not to dump on Emerson polling some more, but you can probably give them a plus or minus 5% on their polling data.

You can check out FiveThirtyEight's analysis of pollsters here. They have a search box to look up specific pollsters. They gave Emerson a B+ with a 5.6% average margin of error and a very small Democrat bias.

StephenFearby said...

Both the NYT editorial page and newsroom are well known for creating puff pieces for their favorite politicians and hit pieces on the ones they don't like. Since Kamala Harris is probably their favorite presidential candidate now, expect the NYT to ratchet up the agitprop.

Example:

Kamala Harris Steps Into the Ring
By Jill Cowan Jan. 22, 2019


'...Observers say Ms. Harris, a 54-year-old former California attorney general, could bridge generations of the party, both in terms of her age and experience and her positions.

While she’s firmly a product of what she once described as San Francisco’s “hard-knocks politics,” Ms. Harris has also tried to align herself with Democrats’ leftward drift. After initially hesitating, she disavowed most corporate donations.

Still, experts have suggested that her toughest criticism will stem from her time as San Francisco’s district attorney and the state’s attorney general.

Already, in a stinging Op-Ed piece, a law professor wrote that Ms. Harris wasn’t the progressive prosecutor she claims she was. That prompted a response from a supporter and civil rights advocate who described Ms. Harris as a “voice for the voiceless and vulnerable,” when she was a prosecutor.

In any case, experts think she’ll try to turn that vulnerability on its head, Politico reported, by presenting her law enforcement background as a foil to a “lawless” presidency.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/california-today-kamala-harris-president-campaign.html

Ken B said...

I have a firm opinion about public polls in the USA. They are always juiced.

I told this theory to a Canadian friend, who scoffed. He was friends with a top executive at Ipsos Reid, a Canadian polling firm of high repute. That executive agreed with me.

The accurate polls are the ones you don’t see.

Mattman26 said...

I would think a senator from Minnesota would get at least a bit of "favorite son/daughter" boost in neighboring Wisconsin. That she would be struggling to outpoll Trump at this point seems problematic.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

I’m surprised to be seeing Biden numbers so high everywhere. I don’t see the appeal, he’s too old. Does he have what it takes to not get bowled over by Trump? Trump is going to start in with the creep factor on Biden, Biden being handsy. Sanders’ appeal is a bit more understandable and in 2016 Sanders always came out on top in a race with Trump, he always had better numbers than Clinton/ Trump.

Trump can’t harm Sanders anymore than he’s already done personally, calling him Crazy Bernie or whatever, he propbably will emphasize the socialism factor. I’ve been saying for a while now that Harris doesn’t seem to be ready for prime time. Warren could gain popularity pretty quickly I think once the others start dropping out, she once was extremely popular. I doubt she can be harmed any further from the Native American controversy.

Mattman26 said...

If Obama has a brain (likely) and the slightest sense of humility (somewhat more doubtful), he will stay on the sidelines for a good long time before endorsing anyone, formally or informally.

cubanbob said...

The poll is a joke. What isn't a joke is that it is structured to change the reality that Trump won on and will win again with the issues that resonate with flyover America. Bernie Sanders ahead of Trump. Sure.

rcocean said...

Shocking. Is this because Harris is unknown or because she's from California? Certainly when it comes to policy, there's not a dimes worth of difference between her Biden or Bernie. One problem with polls this far out is its more of a name recognition test. Lots of Dems won't make up their minds till the debates.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Warren could gain popularity pretty quickly I think once the others start dropping out, she once was extremely popular. I doubt she can be harmed any further from the Native American controversy."

Doubtful. In politics, as in life, dour old white women attract much less attention, and rueful acclamation, than misbehavin' old white men. Trump could effortlessly make Warren look sour and hapless. Sexist no doubt, but there it is.

James K said...

I’m surprised to be seeing Biden numbers so high everywhere. I don’t see the appeal, he’s too old.... Sanders’ appeal is a bit more understandable

Um, Sanders is older than Biden. As for Warren, this college admission scandal has shined a light back on her deception. But 2016 shows that Democrats don't care about lying scolds, so maybe she'll be ok.

M Jordan said...

Ken B ... great comment. I too hold that public polls are juiced but with one caveat: they drop the juice from the recipe in decreasing amounts as Election Day approached. Election Day is the great exposer of juice. I also contend that 80-90% of public polling firms juice to the left.

I would love to see a study done on trend lines as Election Day approaches. I am positive it would show trends consistently moving to the Right. Of course, the left juicers always hope this doesn’t happen ... it’s the purpose of the juicer to make juice the real deal. Narrative-building.

*Excuse the overuse of “juice” here. You passed me the ball, it had spin on it, and I just kept it spinning.

Big Mike said...

Emerson polls registered voters, not likely voters, and they do phone polling, which is known to undercount Republicans and young people (N. B., neither of my sons has ever had a land line). So beyond the fact that we are still about ten months from the Iowa caucuses, there are potential issues with methodology.

M Jordan said...

Warren ain’t gonna be it. She has the same arm-waving disease as Bob (aka Beto).

Bruce Hayden said...

"Warren could gain popularity pretty quickly I think once the others start dropping out, she once was extremely popular. I doubt she can be harmed any further from the Native American controversy."

Then she pretended to like drinking beer. The common touch. Except that we know that if she ever did drink beer, it wouldn’t be Bud Liight (or Coors Light), but some fu fu designer beer. She is a fake. She cheated her way into teaching at Harvard. Trump has his own brand. So do Crazy Bernie, SLO Joe, and Beto. Her brand is as a cheater. A fake. Inauthentic. One of the worst things in politics to be known for. How does she overcome that? Most anything that she would try now would be seen as just that - an inauthentic attempt to overcome her being known as a cheater, a faker. Trump can pull that off, because he is Trump, and has been the Trump we know and either love or hate, no matter how fake, for decades. Warren can’t pull it off. I think that she is a dead woman walking here.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Doubtful. In politics, as in life, dour old white women attract much less attention, and rueful acclamation, than misbehavin' old white men. Trump could effortlessly make Warren look sour and hapless. Sexist no doubt, but there it is.”

I don’t see Warren as dour at all. She is high energy and knows her stuff. Trump can make her look like Fauxahontis and hapless but he can’t make her look ill informed and that might be a pretty important factor to may people. She might make him look ill informed especially in a debate. He doesn’t like debate prep and this time around it might matter to know the issues. His message of cleaning up DC isn’t going to work this time, as DC is still as swampy as ever. Times, they are a changin’ and old white men’s legs get wobbly too. And old white men misbehavin’ men aren’t looking too cute to those under 40. Trump’s cuteness factor may have slipped a bit, even to some who originally supported him.

ESM said...

These polls actually look decent for Trump. He's been "pre-disastered" (reference to The World According to Garp). Not only have all of the skeletons in Trump's closet been outed and autopsied, but the media have touted so many leftover Halloween costumes as skeletons that they've lost all credibility in smearing him. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates have largely been protected by the media, and their skeletons are still rattling around behind an easily opened door.

narciso said...

That was her gig, last time 'you didnt build that' now she had six imitators.

Ken B said...

M Jordan
About shifting juiced polls ... Zogby is one of the clearest examples. He had flashy numbers but was always seeing big “last minute” movement back to the norm. He is so flagrant he even got flack from other pollsters. I saw one article by a pollster/statistician who proved Zogby could not have got his announced conclusions from his announced methods — he would have needed to get over 100% in some later poll to get the shift, OR his earlier polls were not what he claimed.

Yancey Ward said...

I also remember 2004 when all the early polls in 2003 had Bush losing to everybody in OH, VA, and FL- handily losing. Incumbents pretty much always poll poorly in key states, and I don't really view WI as a key state just yet.

The problem for Trump is that his election victory depended on winning 3 states that hadn't voted for a Republican since 1988 and 1984, but this just outlines the problem Republican candidates have nationally as VA, CO, and NV have apparently drifted into leaning blue. This is why I have written many times- only Trump could have won for the Republicans in 2016. Perhaps no Republican can win 2020, but I still think Trump is the only one who can.

tcrosse said...

Bernie had the not-Hillary space all to himself last time. Not so this time.

Yancey Ward said...

"I’m surprised to be seeing Biden numbers so high everywhere. I don’t see the appeal, he’s too old..."

Biden has name recognition that the others don't- he was VP for 8 years, after all. I think Biden's numbers are ceiling in every way, especially in the primaries. As the other candidates preferred by the media gain in name recognition, Biden will suffer proportionately. Sanders also has a name recognition advantage at the moment, but I think Sanders support is more of a floor.

As I have written before, the media have selected Harris as their preference. They will work to destroy all the other female candidates and Booker early on, and after Iowa and New Hampshire, will turn their guns on the other male candidates.

tcrosse said...

Early days. We're rating the horses as they walk around the paddock.

Ralph L said...

Bob Boyd: Klovenhoof.
Ha! I’ll be stealing that one.

From AoS, for AOC: Chiquita Khrushchev

Ralph L said...

We're rating the horses as they walk around the paddock.

No point even looking at the form book--they all claim the same sire--Damn, that's sexist!

Barcelona said...

2016 proved permanently that polls are useless. Completely fictional partisan propaganda. It’s all GIGO.

After the 2018 midterms there were some astonishing interviews in which huge corporate pollsters (Gallup, Pew and others) acknowledged that their response rate is now down to 4 to 6%. So 94-96% of their contact attempts never connect.

They’re on record now admitting they are now reduced to basing their poll results on that 4-6%. Shut Ins, the elderly, stay at home welfare moms, people with landlines and nothing better to do than answer every daytime call— then stay on the line throughout an extended robocall.
In other words, the bottom 4-6% of the national demographic. In every sense.
Even if polls weren’t rigged to the client’s desired results— and they are— any pollster that’s refused by 94% of the public is worse than useless.
These are the folks who kinda, vaguely, reco


Gospace said...

rightguy said...
Emerson's final poll for 2016/Wisconsin was Clinton 48% & Trump 42%. Their final national poll was Clinton in an "electoral landslide".


There are polls for public consumption, and there are real polls. If you're a dot connector, you knew what the real polls said as soon as you read that Hillary cancelled the fireworks.

DavidUW said...

I haven’t lived in Wisconsin since 1997, but I’ve said reparatedly on here that Harris will NOT play well in the Midwest. Defender of cop killers, sleeping her way to the top aren’t exactly hardworking, play by the rules midwestern values.

narciso said...

What does this tell you?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/legalinsurrection.com/2019/03/poll-in-new-york-trumps-approval-ratings-are-higher-than-ocasio-cortezs/amp/

narciso said...

Having misrepresented the events in ferguson, five years ago, the press spins a conspiracy story about the activists.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Kamala Harris — who I've been made to feel is the most likely candidate..

After 2016 listening too intently to the media's favorites has become a losing game.

Trump won by pretending to be a progressive. This is why most intelligent analysis says that only the most progressive candidates stand a chance at energizing enough of the Democrat base to come out and vote against him.

Birkel said...

Warren knows her stuff, especially when she's making up numbers for her bankruptcy "research" lies.

Trump will win because results matter more than rhetoric.

Paul said...

It's a long long way to Tipperary...

Trump will win, silly polls not withstanding.