Clark/Dean/Gep/Kerry/Lieb: Who is the most electable of them all?

Electability is often bandied about as a term of comparison among presidential candidates in the blogosphere with an air of certainty and not much else to back it up in terms of empirical evidence.  Polls are referred to vaguely, if at all-- with little regard for who polled how many people when-- in forming arguments of relative electability.  

In that spirit of statistical munging, I decided to see what would happen if I simply added together the results (weighted by sample size) from several different pollsters taken since, say, October 1st and arrived at averaged matchups for the major candidates vis a vis the president.

What I found is that they're all losing to the president at around 49% - 42%.  All of the Democrats are running within the margin of error (+/- 1.27) of each other, even with the huge super sample size of 5975.  Here are my numbers (percentages and sheer totals based on weighted projection of percentages from each poll):

Bush/Clark
48.6/41.1 (2904/2457)

Bush/Dean
48.8/41.6 (2914/2484)

Bush/Gephardt
48.9/41.2 (2923/2498)

Bush/Kerry
48.3/42.2 (2888/2525)

Bush/Lieberman
49.0/41.7 (2925/2490)


Polls (date, sample size):
Marist (10/3/03, 788)
Newsweek (11/6-7/03, 809)
Newsweek (10/23-24/03, 809)
Newsweek (10/9-10/03, 809)
Quinnipac (10/3/03, 1262)
Pew (10/15-19/03, 577)
Zogby (10/15-18/03, 921)

Source: http://pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm

Obviously, these are apples and oranges compared at different points in time, but I think it's a reasonable expression of the underlying truth-- there's really no basis for saying any of the Democrats are any more electable now (much less a year from now) than any of the others with any degree of certainty.  

Is Kerry's 42.2% really much better than Dean's 41.6%?  In my opinion, no-- especially when you consider that Dean is generally trending up since October 1st, and Kerry is even or off slightly.  Add in MOE and the fact that 'electability' in November '04 may be a very different thing than over the past six weeks, and you've got a statistical washout.

Bottom line, anyone who says Kerry is more 'electable' than Dean as if it is a well-known fact is a statistical shyster-- the numbers just don't support that level of certainty.  In my opinion, relative electability in the general can only be regarded as a gut feeling at this point.

•  Of Course, and Thank You

  One thing's for sure: any candidate who can't answer Bush's million$ in $pring TV ad$ will be as electable as Bob Dole.

  Don't we hear this stuff every four (or eight) years when there's a competitive primary? Anybody got Nexis to find all the "unelectable" references about Bill Clinton circa Gennifer Flowers? Or Ronald Reagan during his 1980 primary fight?

  All I know is, Michael Dukakis had 17 points on the first Bush three months (not twelve) out, and we all love President Dukakis dearly, don't we?

  by sipples on Wed Nov 12, 2003 at 04:33:38 AM PDT

•  Re: Clark/Dean/Gep/Kerry/Lieb: Who is the most ele

  I'm going to just put on my flame-proof suit and back away slowly from this one... heh heh heh.

  (That said, I'm a Dean supporter, so I think he's the most electable)

  by Sauceman on Wed Nov 12, 2003 at 05:01:42 AM PDT

•  sigh

  Bush almost 50%?!?

  Depressing to hear so many sheeple still bleating
  Baaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.

  by Madman in the marketplace on Wed Nov 12, 2003 at 06:17:06 AM PDT

•  Re: Clark/Dean/Gep/Kerry/Lieb:

  What the figures represent is basically that core Dem supporters will support any Dem against Bush (within reason), and none of the candidates has begun to appeal to swing voters.  Thus the question becomes this: which candidate is most likely to appeal to swing voters.  Whilst it seems that all of them could do this to some extent, it strikes me that Clark is the best person to appeal to the independent voter and the swing moderate, who sort of likes Bush, but is worried about Iraq and the economy.  Ditto for concerned republicans, about 15% of whom seem to be leaning away from Bush, which is interesting.  That said, Dean could also do it, given his organisation and potential money (200 million?  Hell he could get 300).  But he has to tone down the anger and start talking more about how to solve Iraq - otherwise people simply won't trust him on it.  
  The only Democrat who will be elected is the one who people feel can get the US out of Iraq without all hell breaking loose.   I think Clark has the best shot at being that Dem.

  by mapantsula on Wed Nov 12, 2003 at 08:08:30 AM PDT

  •  Re: Clark/Dean/Gep/Kerry/Lieb:

    Just as long as you recognize that your belief that Clark is more appealing to swing voters than Dean or anyone else is just that: a belief.

    by Jason on Wed Nov 12, 2003 at 02:29:30 PM PDT

•  Thanks for this Jason

  In the national polls nobody looks more electable than anyone else at this point. Unfortunately, nobody looks electable either.

  It would be great if we had the data on head to heads in the key swing states. Have you assembled that data too?
  

  by Cogito on Wed Nov 12, 2003 at 08:43:27 PM PDT

  •  Re: Thanks for this Jason

    by Jason on Sat Nov 15, 2003 at 10:25:02 PM PDT

  •  Re: Thanks for this Jason

    Sorry-- no state-by-state at this stage.  The dishwasher is broken, so there's no time for that level of detail in meta-poll number-crunching.  

    Seriously, I don't think there's enough data to justify this sort of state-by-state analysis except for NH, IA and SC.

    by Jason on Sat Nov 15, 2003 at 10:31:41 PM PDT