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MYTHS ABOUT HILLARY. The new Washington Post-ABC News poll on the '08 contenders busts a couple of developing myths on the Democratic side.
Myth 1: Hillary Clinton can't rely on support from women because women are ambivalent about her due to her marriage and because women, more generally, are just awful to each other. In fact:
Clinton receives significantly higher support among women than men (49 percent to 29 percent).A twenty-point gap does not strike me as explainable on any other grounds than that women want a female president. A lot of what one sees in these early polls is name recognition, but name recognition can't account for a 20-point pro-Hillary gap in enthusiasm on the part of women surveyed. The easiest explanation is that there is actually some gender solidarity going on.
Myth 2: Clinton is a moderate who people think of as a liberal, while Barack Obama is a liberal who is perceived as a moderate, and thus more electable in a nation that's afraid of liberals. People, it turns out, are smart enough to figure out who actually stands for what, even at this early stage of the game:
Clinton...is favored by more moderates than liberals. Obama has almost equal support among men and women but has twice as much support among liberals as among moderates.Obama has a liberal voting record, opposed the war in Iraq, and has signaled an intention to run as a progressive, should he run. (He used the word "progressive" three times to describe himself and his values during his press conference in New Hampshire last week.) It's not a surprise that liberals like that, or that moderates are slightly more chary of it.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
