McClatchy-Marist national poll: Clinton leads Bush, Christie, & Paul by 9-11pts.

[IceSpear]

Impossible! Hillary is extremely unpopular and her mere presence will spell the defeat of the Democrats she campaigns for! The blue avatars and True Leftists told me so!

[IceSpear]

No one knows who the hell her opponents are, of course she has a 10 point margin 2 years before the election. The average American is a lot more familiar with Hilary than Jeb Bush, Rand Paul or Chris Christie.

Nobody knows who the GOP vice presidential nominee from 2 years ago is? Christie is widely known at this point as well.

[IceSpear]

No one knows who the hell her opponents are, of course she has a 10 point margin 2 years before the election. The average American is a lot more familiar with Hilary than Jeb Bush, Rand Paul or Chris Christie.

Nobody knows who the GOP vice presidential nominee from 2 years ago is? Christie is widely known at this point as well.

Jeb Bush, Chris Christie or Rand Paul were not on the ticket 2 years ago... And I disagree. The average American is a lot more familiar with Hilary. You are not going to vote for her opponents in a poll if you are not familiar with them. It always moderates before the election, no reason to think it won't this time, especially with GOP Congressional wave hopefully coming in this election. Obama's approval ratings are low, whether you want to admit it or not. She will be linked to Obama, and her polling numbers will come back to Earth.

Paul Ryan was, and she leads him in all the polls as well. She also crushes Romney, who has name recognition equal to Hillary's, so you can't fall back on just the name recognition argument.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=196307.0

Her poll numbers already have come down to Earth. Now she's leading the Republicans by 9-11 points instead of by the 20+ points she was leading by back in 2013. Even if they do fall more, she has more than enough cushion considering the last 4 elections were decided by 0, 3, 7, and 4 points respectively.

[IceSpear]

It's a lot more meaningful when you're testing two people with high name recognition (ex: Clinton vs. Romney) as opposed to say, a McCain vs. Obama poll in 2006. Increased polarization has also probably made early polls more indicative than they have been in the past.

[IceSpear]

I think most polls put Christie's name recognition in the 70s.  Rubio's is a bit lower.  Walker's is pretty low.  So there are plenty of potential GOP nominees with lower name recognition than Clinton has (she's well over 90%).

It's a lot more meaningful when you're testing two people with high name recognition (ex: Clinton vs. Romney) as opposed to say, a McCain vs. Obama poll in 2006.

Mondale was well known as the former vice president, but he started out at the beginning of 1984 roughly tied with Reagan.  Reagan won by 18 points:



And Dole was well known in 1995 (being Senate Majority Leader, former presidential candidate, and former VP candidate).  He actually led Bill Clinton in the polls in early 1995, despite eventually losing by ~8 points:

http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu/msg04399.html

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What is your evidence for this?  I don't see how this hypothesis even makes sense.  You could say that polarization will prevent a blowout from occurring, but why would it mean that the candidate who's leading polls right now would be more likely to win?  And even if you can spin a scenario as to why, what is the evidence that this supposed phenomenon is real?

You need a baseline of presidential elections in which the early polls were predictive of the final result in order to prove such an assertion, but if you're saying that this only applies to very recent presidential elections in which both candidates were well known two years beforehand, then you have too few elections to work with in order for things to be statistically meaningful.

I don't see why it doesn't make sense. With increased polarization, there are fewer people who are open to changing their minds, and those who have already made their choice are more likely to stick with it. Granted, there's no way to prove this, it's just a theory. But I doubt we'll be seeing any "Dukakis leads by double digits 3 months before the election, Bush wins easily in November" type elections in the modern era. Romney vs. Obama, for instance, was pretty static. Obama only opened up big leads as Romney was hammered during the GOP primary, and Romney only led immediately after the first debate. The equilibrium during almost the entire race was a modest (2-5 point) Obama lead, and that's how it ended as well.