January 31, 2007
It’s a Real Coin Toss: Focus Group Shows that Hil has No Home-field Advantageby Errol Louis
Hillary Clinton — universally known, widely admired and hellbent on becoming our next President — will have a hard time turning her fame into votes, according to nine ordinary New Yorkers I watched talk for a couple of hours about their hopes, fears and desires for a better nation.
That creates an opening for Barack Obama, who the same minipanel of voters like, and want to know more about.
I was hiding out behind a one-way mirror, watching a focus group run by superpollster Craig Charney, who has sampled voter opinion for everyone from Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela.
Charney assembled a random panel of registered Democrats from Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens who don’t yet feel strongly about anyone who's running for President. He ended up with a group of people ages 45 to 63, all white, and had staff members talk with them about Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and ex-North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
Theresults were stunning.
After watching each of the candidates’ videos announcing their presidential bids, people I figured for Hillary fans reacted against her. A 45-year-old mother of two from Park Slope, Brooklyn — a social worker, no less — was one of the first to flip after watching Clinton's announcement.
“It was canned, over-rehearsed. She’s the one I liked, and it made me like her less,” said the Park Sloper, whose reaction was even stronger when talk turned to Clinton's nuanced, oft-changing position on the Iraq war.
“This is my biggest objection to Hillary,” she said. “[Clinton] says she voted for the war based on what Bush told Congress, but I didn’t buy [Bush’s] story. They’re supposed to be smarter than that.”
That will, indeed, be Clinton’s weak spot — that she voted to give Bush power to launch the disastrous Iraq adventure and explains that mistake in tortured language that rank-and-file Dems don't understand — and won’t forgive.
She made that bed. Now she has to lie in it.
The group generally liked Obama, but the older voters weren’t impressed by his appeals to go beyond party labels.
“Obama’s postpartisan discourse doesn't really play with older primary voters," Charney told me. “The very thing that makes him attractive to younger voters and potentially a strong contender in the general election will make it hard for him to get through the primaries.”
Edwards came out of the session as the winner, with four of the nine participants saying they would vote for him. Some described him as a palatable alternative to Clinton, and nearly all liked the fact that he filmed his announcement in devastated New Orleans rather than a studio.
In the end, only two group members said they were committed to the hometown candidate.
You can’t overgeneralize about one focus group, but this early reading of Hillary’s base suggests her support may be a mile wide — but, surprisingly, only an inch deep.
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