Tipsheet

NBC/WSJ Poll: Hillary's Popularity Craters 11 Points in One Month

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  April 18, 2016 3:08 PM

Now that you mention it, perhaps she was just staring at a television screen showing a graphic of her favorability ratings. The latest NBC/WSJ survey shows a precipitous erosion in Hillary Clinton's popularity, as well as a tightening of the Democratic primary -- which she nevertheless still has locked up, thanks in part to her party's elite super delegates. She may be Democrats' prohibitive frontrunner and presumptive nominee, but her ability to galvanize an anti-bandwagon effect is nearly unparalleled:


The strong favorite to win both the Democratic nomination and the presidency (given her remaining competition) has a remarkable knack for alienating voters. It's almost a skill.  Her personal favorability has fallen by double-digits over this survey's March edition:

[Clinton has experienced] an especially steep decline over the past month. Among voters in both parties, 56% hold a negative view of Mrs. Clinton and 32% hold a positive view. That 24-point gap is almost twice as wide as in a Journal/NBC poll last month, when 51% viewed her negatively and 38% positively, a 13-point gap. Mrs. Clinton’s decline came during a month in which she has been hit by an intensifying barrage of attacks, not just from GOP candidates but from Mr. Sanders, who has won a string of victories in primaries and caucuses.

Sanders has won eight of the last nine Democratic nominating contests, yet the Clinton Death Star maintains its grip on the party's crown.  As the FBI investigation into her email scandal takes several noteworthy turns, Clinton's unique role in shaping the Obamacare mess and the Obama administration's crumbling foreign policy has also come into sharper focus.  Between her policy vulnerabilities, prevailing discontent with the status quo, widespread contempt for the ruling class, and her enduring personal unlikeability, this woman should be ripe for defeat in the fall.  And yet...


My previous tweet above only revealed half of the tell-tale graph.  As you can see, the Republican frontrunner's yawning favorability gap (24/65) is 17 points worse than hers, making him statistically the least popular presidential candidate ever measured by the NBC/WSJ poll.  The Washington Post/ABC News and Associated Press polling series have also produced similarly disastrous results, with roughly two-thirds of all voters expressing unfavorable views of Donald Trump -- including majority "strongly unfavorable" numbers.  Ted Cruz, likely the only viable alternative to Trump on the GOP side, is also viewed quite negatively by voters.  His NBC/WSJ-measured favorability gap clocks in at a Hillaryesque (-23).  His negative rating is seven points better than hers (49 vs 56 percent, respectively), but his positives are also a bit lower.  Meanwhile, many Trump supporters continue to lean heavily on the magical thinking that things aren't so bad, and that their man's brilliant marketing skills will turn this thing around, pronto.  But even as he cleans up his act (relatively speaking) and his campaign is slowly taken over by actual professionals, his historic negatives have held steady across multiple surveys over the span of weeks.  When your disapproval is in the mid-60's, and hovering around 70 percent among women, you cannot win.  It's that simple.  I'll leave you with an example of the brand of spontaneous joy and easygoing relatability that has characterized Hillary Clinton's entire public career.  She loves fun, America: