Poll Numbers are about Attitude and Sentiment, not Votes

Survey polls don’t mean a thing in a political campaign unless, of course, they show your candidate in the lead. Every pundit, strategist and talk show host (yes, this includes you Rush Limbaugh) often dismiss poll results when they’re bad, and never shut up when they are good.

There are dozens of polls. There’s a poll conducted every day (LA Times/USC) and there are some reporting just once a week (Boston Globe). And there are polls having everything to do with the election, but not exactly the election itself. For example, you may be surveyed to report your thoughts on Melania Trump’s likeability, per a Gallup poll.

Interestingly, Gallup doesn’t have a poll asking people what they think of Bill Clinton but it does conduct a survey on whether you feel moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv is a good idea. Maybe they should conduct a poll and ask how many people realized our Israeli embassy was even in Tel Aviv.

“Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?” — Robert Orben, Author and Speechwriter for President Gerald Ford

Polls may not mean much, but one thing is absolutely certain: No American President has ever won the general election when they lose ground coming out of their party’s national convention. And, guess what we’re witnessing this week.

Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton was already losing going into Monday, but the shenanigans from her own party have done a tremendous disservice to the campaign. According to RealClearPolitics (a daily poll), Hillary was only a couple points behind and had numbers in the high 40s. As a matter of fact, one poll taken Saturday had Clinton scored at 49 versus Trump’s 51. But after last night’s creepy bedtime story told by Bill Clinton, Hillary is scoring at 40 and some other polls have her as low as 27.

These numbers are unprecedented in a Presidential campaign because they are scoring during the week of the Democratic National Convention. Bernie Sanders supporters and the crumbling career of Debbie Wasserman Schultz have not helped, at all, and may have left the Clinton campaign in an unrecoverable position.

In addition, Clinton’s opponent hasn’t gone into this week as traditional Republican candidates have before. He is keeping his foot on the gas, widening his lead in the polls. And, on top of this, he isn’t shying away from the cameras as he gave a press conference today with enough provocative material to lead all national news programs this evening.

The campaign is in serious trouble. And the feeling in Philadelphia is candidate Clinton may not have the charisma to squeeze the widening margin, and succeed come November 8th. The Democrats aren’t throwing in the towel, just yet; but they are visibly concerned as pressure mounts to levels unseen at a DNC in decades.

Many Hillary Clinton supporters were expecting a monster ‘bounce’ in attitude and poll numbers following Bill Clinton’s speech last night. They kept reminding me of Bill’s 16-point bounce following the 1992 DNC. However, when I reminded them the 2016 Bill Clinton is damaged goods compared to the 1992 version, they simply respond “it doesn’t matter.”

“America loves Bill!”

That may be, but the only way to see if there is some validity to that statement is to turn our attention back to those pesky polls. The most recent poll released after the Bill Clinton speech was published at 12:01AM today by the LATimes, and it shows a seven point margin in favor of Donald J. Trump.

Again, it would be irresponsible for any campaign to place its future on one single poll, particularly since we’ll see multiple survey findings all day today. But of the 3,000 individuals polled last night by the LATimes, only 1,200 said they would still vote for Hillary in November.

Her campaign is unraveling and the numbers, no matter how inconsequential they may be, are at least providing us a gauge in sentiment and attitude towards Mrs. Clinton. And this is not what she or anyone associated with the campaign even dreamed of during this historic week at the Democratic National Convention.

Todd M. Schoenberger, posting from Philadelphia. Continue the conversation on Twitter @TMSchoenberger.