Hotel Mount Pleasant

Has Clinton fallen behind?

Hillary Clinton’s veneer of invincibility has been tarnished in the past month. Some of the damage has been self-inflicted–her triangulated response to a question about New York giving illegal aliens driver’s licenses being the most notable example. But the real damage to the Clinton II machinery has been done by Hillary’s weak showings in Iowa, where polls currently show her in a statistical tie with Obama and Edwards.

A new poll now reinforces the now familiar argument of “unelectability.” This Zogby poll shows Clinton losing a national election to the top five Republican Presidential candidates–Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney, and Thompson.  To add insult to injury, Obama and Edwards come out ahead in those match-ups.

While this poll may reflect a withering of support for Hillary, it would behoove journalists, pundits, and the public to look at this particular poll’s methodology.  Buried in the last paragraph, a nugget of truth can be found:

“The poll of 9,355 people had a margin of error of plus or minus one percentage point. The interactive poll surveys individuals who have registered to take part in online polls.”

At first glance, the poll appears incredibly robust, with a margin of error far lower than most political polls.  But then one looks at the last sentence, and the pollsters ability to contact 9,355 people becomes questionable.  This “interactive” poll is self-selected; it hardly qualifies as random or scientific.  The poll merely examines views held by those who sign up for online polls, which is hardly a representative swath of society.   Zogby doesn’t even tell us how people sign up for these so called “interactive” polls online, though, if he did, one could expect Ron Paul to have a strong showing in the next news cycle.

It could very well be true that Hillary is lagging in national polls to some or all of the Republican frontrunners.  This poll, however, does not prove that.  Indeed, it doesn’t prove anything, other than the media’s inability to closely scrutinize the facts and political campaigns’ willingness to spin a story to their own advantage.