Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Word Associations

So Quinnipiac recently put forth another objective, honest and unbiased opinion poll designed to boost the sagging fortunes of the so-called Democratic Party. It has the usual blather about how either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden will soon be our next Slytherin Overlord. But then they did ask a question my Inner Stat-Nerd could have some fun with. They gathered three groups of respondents and asked them what word came to mind when they saw Candidate X?

Colin Campbell at Business Insider.com gives details of the scores for Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Nobody has been nominated. so the numbers are predictably negative. Every Republican hates a Democrat, and the loyal boosters of every other Democrat hate that Democrat as well. The same holds true for both Republicans. Look at the numbers absent that context, and Hillary, THE DONALD and Jeb look like quite the stinky bouquet of aromatic, puckered bungholes.

Here’s what the sampled individuals had to say about Donald Trump.

Here’s what the sampled individuals had to say about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Here’s what the sampled individuals had to say about Jeb Bush.

In each case, I attempted to assess the words as positive or negative and then assess whether each person has a positive or negative favorability rating. For each candidate, I determined what percentage of interviewees said each word. I determined the mean and standard deviation thereof. I then multiplied these percentages by plus or minus one depending on whether they were describing the candidate nicely or whether they were describing these three individuals the same way I probably would. Multiply the percentages by the plus or minus ones and then summing these totals gave me a rough proxy for favorability. I then ignored all percentages that were less than the standard deviation percentage and calculated a relevant favorability. A relevant favorability represents the sum total of the more strongly held opinions about each candidate.

The Democrat comes off as Stannis Baratheon to the GOP Lannisters by both of my favorability measures. People hate Hillary – regrettably they seem to hate her less. So what can we learn from comparing the favorability ratings of a Water Moccasin to that of a sex-starved Cobra?

1) There’s an initial drawback to being in a competitive primary. John Kerry polled 15 pts behind George W. Bush during the 2004 Dem Primaries. He held a brief lead in polls taken after he had seen off Howard The Deanis.

2) The Democrats may be less hated than the GOP at the present time. Both GOP Candidates got fewer positives than the Dem.

3) The media makes a difference in favor of the Dems. This is our challenge here at RS.com. We need to help balance that out if we want our beliefs to come out ahead in a democratic process against a stacked mass media.

In conclusion, nobody should assume either nomination has been wrapped up. Jeb Bush and Eva Inevitable are both in for challenging fights. I think this will help the GOP more than it will help the Dems. If either Jeb or THE DONALD actually learns how to play this game, either one can clean Hillary’s clock. She has essentially ossified. She will get no better, she will not acknowledge that she needs to change. The word I would use to describe the fortunes of all three of the candidates data-mined above would be “uncertain.”

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