June 29, 2008

Popular but Polarizing

John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Rudolph Giuliani generate strong interest from core supporters but lose overall favorability due to polarizing appeal

Half of the combined list of top tickets from the OPTIMIZE*08 study feature 2008 presidential primary candidates. These include New York Senator Hillary Clinton and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards on Obama tickets and  former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on McCain tickets.  All five garnered recognition and core support from their primary campaigns.

Notable though is how Edwards, Clinton, and Giuliani slipped in their overall rankings due to polarizing appeal with the overall voter population.  The landmark study providing these results used an evolutionary algorithm to determine levels of core support and overall favorability of 100 potential running mates for the 2008 presidential election.

On core support alone, Edwards would have placed first and Clinton second on the Democratic ticket but slipped to fifth and fourth place respectively on the more important overall favorability measure.  Giuliani placed fourth on core support but traded places with Mitt Romney to take fifth place on overall favorability.

Beyond the impressive result of Colin Powell placing first on both Obama and McCain tickets, were three candidates whose name recognition and broad appeal landed them high on the top 5 lists. On the Republican side: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who was within the margin of error of a four-way tie for top Republican ticket despite her ongoing association with an unpopular president.  On the Democratic side, former Vice President Al Gore and former Majority Leader Dick Gephardt tied for second despite having sat out the 2008 presidential nomination race.

Methodology:

At the beginning of the study, all VP candidates had an equal presence in what is called the evolutionary population.  As voters made their 40,000 ticket choices throughout the study, stronger candidates multiplied in the evolutionary population while weaker candidates start to die off.  The ‘survival Index’ is a relative measure of a VP candidate’s ability to survive in the evolutionary process.  Stronger candidates who improve their presence in the evolutionary population will have survival indices over 100 while candidates with a shrinking presence will index less than 100.