Bizarre results from a CNN poll. I’ll try to summarize:
1. John McCain would lose to Hillary Rodham Clinton he would give Hillary Clinton a run for her money.
2. Alternatively, Rudy Giuliani would lose to Hillary Clinton, but he has a better shot against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Can anyone offer a good pop-psychology answer on this? Obviously it’s all very close to the margin of error, so it could just be a fluke.
McCain v “Rodham Clinton” — two blue-bloods battling it out. “Rodham Clinton” sounds better educated than “Clinton” (and there’s less knee-jerk name recognition, so she wins)
Giuliani v “Clinton” — Giuliani is one o’ them “ethnics” … better to have a nice American girl. But “Rodham Clinton” sounds like a snooty WASP, we’d rather have some Italian guy who can probably identify with us working types.
Might leave an interesting question for pop-psychology, but I also see this as a reason to be very wary of polls. Anyone who has watched half an hour of the evening news knows exactly who Hillary Clinton is, with or without Rodham. And yet, even as this may be more reason to abandon polls, it might just spark greater use of them.
Re: 1. — Whereas the blueblood sound of “Rodham” trumps the overly Irish-y “McCain,” “Clinton” just sounds backwater and white trash versus Paddy is a tossup.
Re: 2. — Everyone knows “Hillary Clinton” but who is this “Rodham” person — some kind of porn star?