Poll Vaulting: Good News For Clinton, Worse For Giuliani: New Poll Finds Clinton Would Crush Giuliani in National Election

Politico has the story, and it’s worth a read.

Here’s the crux:

In a hypothetical matchup between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, bloc after bloc of traditionally Republican voters break for Clinton:

She wins the South.

She polls evenly with voters who attend church at least once a week.

She splits families with a household income above $100,000.

She loses rural voters and men — but only by a narrow margin.

All are constituencies Republicans have dominated for decades; George W. Bush won each by double-digit margins.

The findings from The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press remain preliminary, considering even the primaries are still two months off.

But Pew questioned an unusually large number of voters to try to paint the most accurate picture possible of where the presidential contest stands today.

Should the race continue down its current trajectory, the poll finds Clinton defeating Giuliani by eight percentage points.

First, on Giuliani. This is pretty damaging, as his main claim to the Republican mantle has been his electability, and this poll severely undermines that. The specter of not even carrying the South against Clinton could prove to be a major turning point in the Republican primary. It should also be noted that this news comes on the heels of the attack on Giuliani by Biden last night; the Giuliani campaign has resorted to attacking Biden back, but frankly that’s too easy a target, and not the real issue. All the retorts back by Giuliani and his supporters have been at Biden, and not on what he said, which actually got a big laugh. As pointed out earlier, it seems clear that Giuliani recognizes this himself. In fact, a little humor by him himself might go a long way towards capitalizing on it. The worse news is that with this bit fresh in everyone’s mind, now this poll comes out: suddenly, Giuliani’s two biggest pillars of his campaign - his performance on 9/11 and his electability - are both undermined. That’s not an easy problem to overcome, as normally Giuliani could focus on the other when pressed on one. But given his demeanor, he’s not going to back down, and I expect him to go to work immediately on a campaign to mitigate the poll number (although it’s large sample size may make that difficult) and salvage his reputation. But if Giuliani doesn’t win the nomination, I’d recommend looking back to this week, as these events and his response are going to be crucial.

As for Clinton, after the disappointing night she had last night (to put it mildly), this is really welcome news for her campaign. It underscores her electability compared to both Obama (who might have bigger problems in the South) and Edwards (who certainly could not be any better).

Now, I’ve gone on record as saying I don’t like national polls. I still don’t. But that doesn’t change the very real political impact that a poll like this will have.

Also, it should be noted that given their relative notoriety and that they’re running national campaigns, a poll like this is slightly more reliable.

But it should be still taken with a giant pail of salt. Right, Michael?

 Update: Same day, different poll, different results: A Quinnipiac University national poll finds Giuliani ahead 45-43; but there’s no comparable demographic breakdown. Reasonably good news for Giuliani, but the Pew poll should be more influential.