Stopping by RealClearPolitics today, I noticed just one 2016 general election poll in the last month: A CNN/ORC poll from Dec 28th that matches up Clinton against several potential GOP candidates. It is rather staggering in chart form:
Holy moly! As of late last month, Jeb Bush is apparently the only candidate who comes even remotely close to making this a race, and that's being generous. (Note: Paul Ryan was close behind, but he recently announced his non-candidacy).
I wanted to find out more, and a quick search located the relevant article: CNN/ORC Poll: Bush surges to 2016 GOP frontrunner. Ahh, the headline leaves out some important info, but this is nothing too surprising. News organizations will almost always hype the horse race to make things seem as close as possible for the sake of ratings and readership. But when I read through almost the entire article to get some more info on the general election numbers, here's what I found: Nothing.
Huh? I began to doubt that I was in the right place until I reached the brief next-to-last paragraph, but that didn't tell me very much. So I opened up the PDF and scrolled down a few pages. And there, finally, are the numbers... the only numbers that really lay the cards on the table for the general election at this stage of the game: Bush may have been surging last month, but he's only surging into a chance to lose in a landslide to Hillary Clinton.
CNN doesn't just bury the lede, but almost completely buries her lead.
"But wait!", you might say. "That was then and this is now...because there's a dashing new kid in town by the name of Mitt who might just change everything!". Well, it turns out that CNN also matched him up against Hillary last July and...
Anything can happen from now until election day, obviously, and this piece is not meant to gloat, cause complacency, or demoralize the Republicans (okay, maybe the latter just a bit). However, make no mistake about it, the media will undoubtedly filter the race over the next two years in accordance with their own needs. Luckily, it's incredibly easy to dig a little deeper if you want to know the real story.
Same as it ever was...
Originally posted at HillaryHQ.com