I'd like to take another crack at the argument that Senator Clinton is the least electable candidate in the General election. It's a common argument, one that has been repeated so often that it is close to becoming conventional wisdom. People often selectivley cite her favorability numbers. They pick the worst ones and ignore the best. Some polls have her unfavorables in the low 40's or even high 30's. But we don't often discuss those.
The unelectable arguement is not actually supported by current poll numbers. The current state polls do not show Hillary Clinton losing by a wide margin. They don't show her losing by a small margin. They don't show her winning by a small margin. In fact, they show her winning a landslide election against the strongest Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani.
Over the last few weeks SurveyUSA, Quinnipiac and Rasmussen have released a large number of state head to head polls. They have covered the traditional swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida several times. They've also looked at Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, Viginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Wisconsin and Missouri. The results from these polls have been interesting, and stand in strong oposition to the unelectable myth.
The site http://www.270towin.com/ has a useful feature. It allows you to manipulate an electoral map of the United States. Using the most recent poll numbers from the above groups, you can change the states to reflect the current status of the candidates. According to the most recent polls, Hillary Clinton wins Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, Virgina, Kentucky, Iowa, Wisonsin, Missouri, Arkansas, New Mexico and Oregon. Assuming that she wins these states and all the same ones as Kerry and Gore, she will beat Giuliani by 354 to 184 electoral votes.
Now, these polls were taken before the DNC gave us a huge setback in Florida. So we can assume she won't win that. If we also assume the worst and say that she won't win Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio or Missouri, she still prevails in the general election by 12 electoral votes. In fact, if she just wins the same states as Gore and Kerry as well as the Clinton state of Arkansas, she wins by 2 electoral votes.
Against Romney, it's something of a massacre where she wins by an electoral vote of around 400 to his 150 or so.
Chris Bowers, a man who really, really doesn't like Clinton has compiled his own electoral map.
http://openleft.com/...
It doesn't include the recent winning poll numbers in Ohio, Missouri or the somewhat older West Virginia poll. But it still has her winning by 335-203.
The SurveyUSA polls were posted by Kos on the front page, but you can find most of them here, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/... Some polls do not seem to have been posted, but if you click on the matchup (such as Wisconsin: Giuliani vs. Clinton or Ohio:Giuliani vs. Clinton) they give you the most recent poll.
So, as I hope you have seen, the idea that Hillary Clinton is unelectable is not supported by the facts on the ground. We could be looking at a landslide victory for the Democrat in 2008.