This is the photo that probably kept a lot of people in Brooklyn from sleeping last night. At least, people at Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.
The photo above was taken in Madison, Wis., a little more than 100 miles from the border of Iowa, where a reported 10,000 people came to hear Bernie Sanders speak Wednesday. The polling strength of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) in Iowa is almost certainly in part due to the proximity of his state, so all of those excited Wisconsinites aren’t what Clinton’s team wants to see.
Hillary Rodham Clinton on the trail. View Photos The Democratic presidential candidate hits the road to make her 2016 pitch.
What’s interesting is that this is not the same scenario as we see in Bloomberg’s polling. Clinton has seen a tangible erosion of support among men and the very liberal — to the point that she actually trails among the latter group. But she’s also seen a big drop in support from women in the state.
That’s a 12-point drop among women, in a poll with a margin of error of 3.6 points. It’s real.
When we were tossing cold water on the Bloomberg poll, we aggregated the anyone-but-Hillary vote to compare it to the front-runner. Here, you can see that the not-Hillary vote has markedly increased — meaning that the number of people voting against Clinton isn’t just switching between candidates, but that people are moving away from her.
The contingent of people who prefer a not-Clinton candidate is at 44 percent. That’s … not good for Clinton.
The long-standing “this isn’t 2008” argument still applies; Clinton trailed in Iowa at this point in 2008, after all. And there’s a lot of campaign to go, in which the more-polished Clinton will go head-to-head with the less-polished Sanders.
But more polls like this one — and more photos like the one at the top — and Clinton staffers will need to start ordering Ambien by the crate.
