But if Mrs. Clinton runs for president in 2016, one thing is almost certain: she won’t be as popular as she is right now. Recent polls show that about 65 percent of Americans take a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton, while only about 30 percent have a negative one. Those are remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.

But part of the reason for Mrs. Clinton’s high numbers is that, as secretary of state, she has remained largely above the partisan fray that characterizes elections and fights over domestic policy.

Over the course of her long career, the public’s views of Mrs. Clinton have shifted along with her public role. When she has been actively engaged in the hand-to-hand combat that characterizes election campaigns and battles in Congress, her favorability ratings have taken a hit, only to recover later.

Mrs. Clinton might be the most polled about American in history, other than those who have actually become president. Between the PollingReport.com database and other publicly available polling archives, I was able to identify about 500 high-quality telephone surveys that tested her favorability ratings with the public.

In the chart below, I’ve taken a moving average of Mrs. Clinton’s favorable and unfavorable ratings dating back to 1992. (The average is based on the 10 surveys that were conducted closest to the given date). The chart also highlights some of the most important moments of Mrs. Clinton’s career.

But if Mrs. Clinton runs for president in 2016, one thing is almost certain: she won’t be as popular as she is right now. Recent polls show that about 65 percent of Americans take a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton, while only about 30 percent have a negative one. Those are remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.

But part of the reason for Mrs. Clinton’s high numbers is that, as secretary of state, she has remained largely above the partisan fray that characterizes elections and fights over domestic policy.

Over the course of her long career, the public’s views of Mrs. Clinton have shifted along with her public role. When she has been actively engaged in the hand-to-hand combat that characterizes election campaigns and battles in Congress, her favorability ratings have taken a hit, only to recover later.

Mrs. Clinton might be the most polled about American in history, other than those who have actually become president. Between the PollingReport.com database and other publicly available polling archives, I was able to identify about 500 high-quality telephone surveys that tested her favorability ratings with the public.

In the chart below, I’ve taken a moving average of Mrs. Clinton’s favorable and unfavorable ratings dating back to 1992. (The average is based on the 10 surveys that were conducted closest to the given date). The chart also highlights some of the most important moments of Mrs. Clinton’s career.

After Tuesday’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton effectively brought the campaign of Bernie Sanders to an end, there was a slew of articles celebrating Sanders, the Democratic primary runner-up, for achieving a lot, even though he didn’t win.

These accolades are well-deserved, as Sanders was able to go far in his run against the party favorite, to push the party platform to left, and to normalize the word “socialism.”

But in all the celebrating of this man for his achievements, I request that we also celebrate the woman in the race, for doing what no woman has ever done before: Win a major party nomination to run as president.

And she beat a man to do it, fair and square.

This isn’t one of those situations where the woman is brought in to clean up the mess a man made, as you see with Theresa May or Marissa Mayer. The candidates were competing to win the legacy of Barack Obama, who is looking to leave office in a tide of popularity, and to run against one of the most loathed candidates of all time, Donald Trump. Getting the Democratic nomination is a sweet gig right now, the kind of sweet gig that is almost always reserved for a white man, but the majority of voters decided that this time, they’d let a woman have a crack at it. This is huge.

Quinnipiac University has developed a reputation for outlier polls that consistently deliver bad news for Hillary Clinton and good news for Donald Trump. When we deconstruct their polls, Quinnipiac’s errors are glaringly obvious.

On June 29, we took apart a Q poll that showed Donald ahead of Hillary nationally by two points.



My colleagues Anthony Reed (predictive modeling expert and founder of the highly respected Benchmark Politics) and Eric Kleefeld pointed out that Quinnipiac was alone in its depiction of the race as particularly close. Most other polls at the time indicated a Hillary lead of between 4 and 6 points, and some polls placed her advantage at 8 points or above. Unsurprisingly, the Q poll got a wave of breathless media coverage. But a “unique poll result” is typically an indication of a bad poll result.



Here’s Quinnipiac’s fundamental problem: They tend to under-represent minorities. In their June 29 analysis, Reed and Kleefeld argued that polls like PPP, IBD/TIPP predict white turnout will be around 70 percent in 2016, down from 72 percent in the 2012 exit poll. Quinnipiac, on the other hand, has white turnout pegged at 73%. Another dubious finding in the June 29 Q poll is Latino support for Donald at 33% when most polls place it around 20%.

Quinnipiac’s reputation was already very shaky, in light of their dishonest, discredited, and widely disseminated 2015 poll announcing that in a word-association exercise, voters immediately thought of Hillary as a “liar.”

While Quinnipiac presented the poll as evidence that voters associated “liar” with Hillary, we demonstrated that it was Republican and Republican-leaning respondents to the Q-poll who linked Hillary to liar and other derogatory terms (including “bitch”). It is a vastly different thing for Republicans, parroting Fox news and talk radio, to hurl misogynistic insults at Hillary than for all voters to believe Hillary is a liar.

As Mediaite explained at the time: “As far as we know, only 35% of the people asked had something negative to say about Hillary Clinton.” But the way Quinnipiac and the media played it, Hillary was seen as a “liar” by the majority of American voters.

From Benghazi to scandals of years past, Republicans for the next two years will work to chip away at Clinton’s favorability ratings. Their goal, of course, is to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming the first female president in 2016 by using any tactic necessary to undermine the former first lady’s political credibility.

The foundation of the Republican strategy against Hillary, like most political campaigns, revolves around negativity. Whether a message is true or false, as long as it produces a narrative that is disseminated (free of charge) through most media outlets, that’s all that matters to political strategists. As stated in a paper by John G. Geer of Vanderbilt University (published by Harvard University), negative media messages gain widespread attention, regardless of their accuracy.

So, if Karl Rove simply mentions the possibility of Hillary Clinton having brain damage from a concussion (even if he later recants such a statement), he’s achieved his goal by simply having news outlets publicize his accusation. Controlling and deciding a narrative is important.

There’s no doubt that negativity (without necessarily relevance or truth) is effective. As a result, if they can continually evoke doubt as to Clinton’s ability at protecting Americans from terror, the Republican candidate stands a better chance at winning. Republicans will no doubt utilize negative media attention to create controversy and attempt to control a narrative.

Quinnipiac University has developed a reputation for outlier polls that consistently deliver bad news for Hillary Clinton and good news for Donald Trump. When we deconstruct their polls, Quinnipiac’s errors are glaringly obvious.

On June 29, we took apart a Q poll that showed Donald ahead of Hillary nationally by two points.



My colleagues Anthony Reed (predictive modeling expert and founder of the highly respected Benchmark Politics) and Eric Kleefeld pointed out that Quinnipiac was alone in its depiction of the race as particularly close. Most other polls at the time indicated a Hillary lead of between 4 and 6 points, and some polls placed her advantage at 8 points or above. Unsurprisingly, the Q poll got a wave of breathless media coverage. But a “unique poll result” is typically an indication of a bad poll result.



Here’s Quinnipiac’s fundamental problem: They tend to under-represent minorities. In their June 29 analysis, Reed and Kleefeld argued that polls like PPP, IBD/TIPP predict white turnout will be around 70 percent in 2016, down from 72 percent in the 2012 exit poll. Quinnipiac, on the other hand, has white turnout pegged at 73%. Another dubious finding in the June 29 Q poll is Latino support for Donald at 33% when most polls place it around 20%.

Quinnipiac’s reputation was already very shaky, in light of their dishonest, discredited, and widely disseminated 2015 poll announcing that in a word-association exercise, voters immediately thought of Hillary as a “liar.”

While Quinnipiac presented the poll as evidence that voters associated “liar” with Hillary, we demonstrated that it was Republican and Republican-leaning respondents to the Q-poll who linked Hillary to liar and other derogatory terms (including “bitch”). It is a vastly different thing for Republicans, parroting Fox news and talk radio, to hurl misogynistic insults at Hillary than for all voters to believe Hillary is a liar.

As Mediaite explained at the time: “As far as we know, only 35% of the people asked had something negative to say about Hillary Clinton.” But the way Quinnipiac and the media played it, Hillary was seen as a “liar” by the majority of American voters.

If you followed the Democratic primary at all, odds are you’ve seen at least one article written by a person named H.A. Goodman. Over the last year, Goodman has spammed the Internet with around 156 articles (I actually went through his archives and counted them) and several videos, either “in support” of Sanders or bashing Clinton. That averages out to 13 a month, every single month — on one subject. And by one subject, I mean one subject. Looking through his archives from June 2015-June 2016, I saw maybe 4 or 5 (if that) articles where he wrote about something that didn’t pertain to Sanders or Clinton. As a writer myself, I find that absolutely ridiculous.

Especially from someone who considers himself a “liberal” or a “progressive” who didn’t seem to find the need to cover Donald Trump much at all. One would think that, even as “pro-Bernie” as Goodman claims he is, he might have found it important to call out Trump’s belittling of veterans; sexism; racism; bigotry; calls to ban all Muslims; or to address anything one of the most vile candidates in modern U.S. history has said and done over that same 12-month timespan.

Either way, I do think it’s valid to question the true “pro-Sanders” roots of H.A. Goodman. You see, I also looked at the archives of everything else he’s written and not one time prior to April 29, 2015 did Mr. Goodman write an article about Bernie Sanders. Most people who followed politics knew for weeks (if not months) before Bernie Sanders officially announced, that he was probably going to run for president. Meanwhile, H.A. Goodman was promoting practically everyone but Bernie Sanders as an effective challenger to Clinton. Here are a few of the headlines he wrote before April 29, 2015:

Why Martin O’Malley and Elizabeth Warren Can Beat Any Republican, Including Walker, Bush, Paul and Cruz (March 25, 2015)
The Answer to Hillary Clinton’s ‘Emailgate’: Vote Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2016 (March 6, 2015)
Why Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire Should Choose Jim Webb Over Hillary Clinton (April 21, 2015)
How O’Malley, Warren and Webb can save Democrats from Clinton (April 16, 2015)
Why Americans should consider O’Malley for President (April 1, 2015)
5 Reasons Liberals Tired of War Should Vote for Rand Paul Over Hillary Clinton (November 21, 2014)
I’m a Liberal Democrat. I’m Voting for Rand Paul in 2016. Here is Why. (November 17, 2014)
Why President Rand Paul Will Keep America Safer Than Bush, Obama and Hillary Clinton (November 13, 2014)

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I find it a little peculiar that this Bernie superfan, of sorts, somehow seemed to want a whole lot of other people to challenge Hillary Clinton — but Sanders. I mean, Jim Webb? Rand Paul? Before he ever mentioned Sanders’ name once, he pushed for an actual Republican to be our next president and a former Republican as well — yet not a whisper of Bernie Sanders’ was anywhere to be found. That seems rather odd.

Hillary Clinton's lead over Donald Trump was about five points in a Suffolk University-USA Today poll released Monday. That's about in line with the recent RealClearPolitics polling average, which estimates Clinton's lead at four-and-a-half points in all of the various recent surveys.

Buried in the cross-tabs of the Suffolk-USA Today poll, though, is an interesting bit of data. The pollsters also asked people which news network they trusted the most, which allows us to see how fans of one network versus another view the two major-party candidates for president.

People who trust MSNBC the most were more likely to back Clinton, by a 77-point margin. CNN-watchers were also heavy Clinton backers, by 55 points. Fans of the major traditional networks all preferred Clinton, too, by 35-, 20- and 38-point margins for viewers of ABC, NBC and CBS, respectively.

Viewers of Fox News, as you might expect, were the only group to prefer Trump, and did so by a 71-point margin.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/12/how-fox-news-fans-keep-donald-trump-afloat/

Hillary Clinton's lead over Donald Trump was about five points in a Suffolk University-USA Today poll released Monday. That's about in line with the recent RealClearPolitics polling average, which estimates Clinton's lead at four-and-a-half points in all of the various recent surveys.

Buried in the cross-tabs of the Suffolk-USA Today poll, though, is an interesting bit of data. The pollsters also asked people which news network they trusted the most, which allows us to see how fans of one network versus another view the two major-party candidates for president.

People who trust MSNBC the most were more likely to back Clinton, by a 77-point margin. CNN-watchers were also heavy Clinton backers, by 55 points. Fans of the major traditional networks all preferred Clinton, too, by 35-, 20- and 38-point margins for viewers of ABC, NBC and CBS, respectively.

Viewers of Fox News, as you might expect, were the only group to prefer Trump, and did so by a 71-point margin.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/12/how-fox-news-fans-keep-donald-trump-afloat/