It is too early for us to take the smattering of presidential election polls too seriously, but, having looked through today’s offerings from PPP and Quinnipiac, I will say this: If I were sitting in the Clinton camp today, I’d be less than thrilled. It’s not so much that Clinton is losing some key head-to-head matchups in some important swing states — although she is — nor that her showings in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are so poor — although they are. Rather, it’s that her numbers are underwater in all of the wrong places. Whether Hillary is beating Marco Rubio in Florida is, at this stage, not greatly important. That she is perceived as untrustworthy and uncaring, however, is a big deal. Take a look at these numbers from Quinnipiac:
Can she turn this around? Possibly. Will it be difficult? Absolutely.
Now take Marco Rubio, who, per Quinnipiac’s data, seems at the moment to be the strongest general election candidate the Republicans have:
(Jeb Bush also does well on the questions of “honesty” and “cares about me,” although his approval ratings are underwater in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Scott Walker doesn’t feature heavily within the poll, although his favorability numbers are in there and they aren’t great.)
This is just a snapshot, of course. As the campaign heats up and the attack ads start flying, these numbers will change. Still, were I Hillary I’d be wondering about my strategy going forward. You will recall that even when voters disagreed with Barack Obama on the issues, they still thought he cared deeply about them. From the data that I’ve seen, that seems to have mattered an awful lot in 2012. If Clinton does find herself up against someone like Rubio, she’s going to have a lot of ground to make up. The big question: Is she up to it as a candidate?