Hillary-McCain crossover polls are consistent with earlier polls

According to Wikipedia, McCain's popular vote was 59,934,814, call it 60 million. 16% of that, the Hillary crossovers, is ... 9.6 million.

In the primaries, 18 million voted for Hillary. 35% of them, ie 6.3 million, said in primary exit polls that they would not support Obama. Phone polls that counted both Hillary-to-McCain voters and stay homes in May, June, and August iirc were pretty close to the primary exit polls. Breakdowns showed about 3 million planning to vote for McCain, 4 million planning to stay home.

43% of these voters who supported McCain but would have backed Clinton if she were in the race described themselves as Independents. 31% were Republicans; while 26% were Democrats. [CBS story cited previously]

26% of 9.6 million is 2.5 million. Add a few from the Independents who got polled as Hillary supporters during the summer and there's the same 3 million Hill's voting for McCain. So here's three different kinds of pollings that come up with figures all in the same ball park. That suggests that these three pollings were pretty reliable. The Republicans who preferred Hillary were unexpected gravy. 

This is evidence for Hillary being in fact the more electable candidate than Obama -- and for 9.6 million people, the more credible leader.

Nov 4 exit polls: Hillary would have won bigger

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/11/12/politics/horserace/entry4596620.shtml?source=search_story 

CBS News’ Election and Survey Unit’s survey analyst extraordinaire Jennifer De Pinto [....]

As voters left the polls on Election Day, many were asked how they would have voted if the election match-up were between Hillary Clinton and John McCain rather than Barack Obama and McCain. 52 percent said they would have backed the former Democratic candidate; 41 percent would have voted for McCain, wider than Obama’s 7-point margin over McCain.  

Interestingly, 16 percent of McCain voters said they would have voted for Clinton, the Democrat, if she had been her party’s nominee.  

I don't know which exit polls you consider not reliable and how you would compare their methodology with this. Iirc exit polls from the later primaries showed about 35% of HIllary supporters were planning to not support Obama in November (those did not break down the number who would actually vote for McCain from those who would stay home). Pls note that the Nov 4 story calculated in the factor of Obama supporters who would have stayed home, but could not calculate in the Hillary supporters who DID stay home. Telephone polls in June and near the convention found more HIllary supporters planning to stay home than planning to vote for McCain. 

Pls distinguish between Obama's decision to reject the Clinton/Obama ticket -- and Obama supporters' choice to support him in that decision. That would have been a good time for Obama supporters who also cared about feminism, to speak out and urge him to accept Hillary's win/win offer (a feminine solution).

GOP discrediting Palin? She still leads for 2012

Even during the campaign some anonymous McCain 'staffers' were discrediting Palin. She was called a 'diva'; and who leaked the info about the wardrobe the RNC had supplied? If she had refused to wear those clothes, they would have called her a 'diva' for the refusal!

But it's not working. In a poll this month iirc, she was still the choice of all GOP for 2012 (though narrowly, a 3-way split) -- and 10 points ahead with GOP women.

I know some Hillary supporters had a bad reaction to Palin's manner, conservatism, etc and of course they are the ones who got the publcity. But a poll showed that about an equal number of Hillary supporters liked her,  so it balanced out.

I'd like more detail, but I get the impression that Palin is very ... WISE ... about deciding what to focus on, and managing her career by getting real things done for the real voters in Alaska. Obviously she has wonk brilliance with numbers and high-powered negotation (gas companies, pipeline). But sfaik her strategy with building on real accomplishments shows a good balance of judgment. (See USA Today's "Palin governed from the center.")

And when in doubt, she focuses on practical and ethical. Instead of fighting for a bill that would have denied state employees' same-sex partners benefits, she vetoed it, saying that it was unconstitutional and not many partners were applying anyway, so it was cheaper to pay the benefits!

Same with her appointment of Judge Christen. Instead of going with ideology, she chose the candidate clearly most qualified.

For Madeline, continuing: Clinton/Obama 2008

Another factor on the older woman being by-passsed for a younger man.

Background: In fact Hillary was the more electable candidate. Exit polls showed that she would have beaten McCain by 12% -- Obama only won by 7%

The key is that Obama was young enough to run again in 2016 or later, but because of the Clintons' age and Bill's health, 2008 was probably Hillary's last chance. But there was a win-win solution, which Hillary proposed: a Clinton/Obama ticket.

That would have been an easy GE victory, and given Obama 16 years in the White House. He could fly around giving speeches and not having to deal with any of these problems. After 8 years of the Clintons cleaning things up, Obama would be the obvious nominee, have another easy GE, and a really easy transition.

Instead, Obama went to a lot of trouble to destroythe first woman president's only chance. Hillary could have run for president in 2004 or even 2000, but she had chosen to do her homework, learn the job, work her way up. This left her only the one chance, 2008.

Obama destroyed this, using very nasty tactics and smears, split the Dem voters driving several million to vote for McCain in protest.

Hillary's feminine solution was to promote Obama's future by giving him the VP position. His response was to destroy her future.

*Bill had multiple-bypass heart surgery in 2004 and will be due for it again around 2019

For Madeline (posted at TNA)

If the candidates had been exactly equal in age, experience, ability, issues, character — I would probably have voted for the Black, as there are fewer Blacks in the pipeline.

Otherwise, I’d have voted for the older candidate, especially if the younger were young enough to run several more times, but for the older, this might be the last chance.

There’s a pattern that older feminists notice: an experienced, qualified middle aged woman is passed over for promotion in favor of a younger, less experienced man — and she is often made his secretary and required to teach him the job! (Or perform it herself in secret, letting him get the credit.)

For informed older women like Sebelius, Pelosi, etc to cheat in the primaries to make this pattern play out on the national scale, ignoring HIllary’s better experience and qualifications, was … shall we say … not quite “supporting the woman.”

Madeline....

Madeline,

I copied some of our old Palin discussion to this blog a few entries below at 

http://florasteele.blogspot.com/2009/03/for-madeline-re-palins-intelligence.html

but I'd rather continue our current conversation from TNA.

For Madeline re Palin's intelligence

I'm moving some of our old discussion here so we can get more deeply into it if you like. I'm really interested in these different views of, perhaps, different kinds of intelligence.

So as not to monopolize the front page, the long stuff is in a Comment to this post.