A current rec-listed diary complains that the latest CNN national poll, like an NBC poll before it, includes Joe Biden in head-to-head match-ups against three Republican candidates, but doesn't include Bernie Sanders at all. According to the diary, this is no coincidence:
The corporate media is really getting terrified. They want to antagonize Hillary and create a horse race, but at the same time don't want to legitimize a socialist who constantly lambasts their business model of "WHAT ABOUT YOUR GAFFES?!"
Apparently this terror about legitimizing Sanders doesn't preclude releasing a poll that (as the diarist acknowledges) puts Sanders just ten points behind Hillary Clinton, his best result yet. But is it the best explanation for including Biden and not Sanders in head-to-heads?
I sure don't think so. I think one obvious rationale is that Biden's name recognition is better than Sanders'. And PPP's recent head-to-head results don't really flatter Sanders. Mostly, I think this is a tempest in a teacup. More below the swirling cloud of suspense.
I don't think any of these points is original, but I will try to summarize them in my own words. tl;dr: What I already said, plus the data in points 4 and 6 and maybe the final paragraph.
Point 1: Fourteen months out, general election polling is arguably pretty pointless. Whatever potential voters may think of the various candidates now, they will probably be thinking differently by November 2016. And the less they know about the candidates right now, the less informative the head-to-head comparisons will be. (We'll come back to that in a moment.)
Point 2: Surveys are time-limited. Not only do sponsors pay more for longer surveys than shorter ones, but the longer a survey gets, the less likely respondents are to get to the end — and if they don't reach the demographic questions at the end, the entire interview is unusable. So pollsters (especially those who use live interviews) have to make some decisions about what to put in and what not to.
Point 3: Given 1 and 2 above, it's at least plausible that if a pollster does decide to ask general election questions over a year in advance, it should go with the best-known contenders. Asking people whether they would vote for a candidate they've never or barely heard of is pretty uninformative, and even faintly abusive. (Have you ever responded to a telephone survey with lots of questions you couldn't give informed answers to? Grrrr.)
Point 4: Joe Biden, the sitting vice-president, is distinctly better known than Bernie Sanders. It may not be fair, but it's true. In the last national PPP survey (8/28-30), 30% of respondents weren't willing to say whether they had a favorable or unfavorable impression of Sanders, compared to only 17% for Biden. And it's a fair guess that many people's impressions of Biden are stronger than their impressions of Sanders. Choosing Biden over Sanders isn't a slam dunk (cf. Point 6), but it's eminently reasonable.
Point 5: But isn't it unfair to 'privilege' a person who may never run? I don't see why. Back when PPP was polling Clinton, Biden, and Warren in head-to-heads in the swing states (as recently as April 9-13 in New Hampshire), did people bitterly complain that of all imaginable Democratic candidates, one could hardly be further from actually running than Warren was at that point? I don't recall that they were. If Jim Webb had announced in March, would PPP have been ethically obligated to ask about him instead? I don't think so. It's at least legitimate for pollsters to consider national prominence.
Point 6: Contrary to what many Kossacks apparently assume, citing head-to-head figures for Sanders wouldn't necessarily bolster his candidacy. We know this not only from first principles (it's hard to use polls to assess the "electability" of someone who isn't well known), but from the same PPP survey. PPP asked a bunch of head-to-head questions, so we have some partial comparisons:
Margin vs.: Clinton Biden Sanders
Bush +4 +3 -1
Carson 0 -6
Cruz +5
Fiorina +2 +1
Huckabee +6
Kasich +5
Rubio +4
Trump +2 +6 -1
Walker +7 +1
The obvious Sanders-oriented headlines from these numbers would not be flattering to Sanders. Right now, Biden — not having declared his candidacy — is doing better in the general election match-ups than Sanders.
Point 7: But that comparison is misleading because Sanders is less well-known? Right. Remember point 4?
Now, you may think that Sanders will only become more popular as more people come to know him. Or you may think that Republican attack ads would devastate Sanders in a general election if he got that far. Or you may not know what to think. Did PPP's head-to-head results help you figure it out? I can't say they help me much. (See point 1.) Do these numbers "legitimize" Sanders? I don't see how.
Point 8: Whatever you think these head-to-head numbers mean (if anything), they aren't likely to have much impact on people's perceptions. Most potential voters, if they notice poll results at all, may pick up on the top one or two results. Heck, I'm pretty hard-core, and if there was a rec-list diary around here about how the PPP poll had legitimized Sanders' win chances in the general election, I missed it. That's not to say that a rec-list diary has any impact, mind you. Was CNN afraid of what would happen if they included some Sanders head-to-heads? I'm thinking no.
The idea that CNN (or NBC before) avoided asking head-to-head Sanders questions in order to deny him legitimacy, for me, is a dog that won't hunt. Most people just don't care how Sanders is polling against Trump or Carson or Bush. Arguably nobody should care. I'm not saying we're bad people if we care. But I do say it doesn't make much sense to argue that corporate America is trying to micromanage media polling to keep Sanders under wraps. That just seems kind of desperate.