Hillary and likability

A new poll out today asks an interesting question amongst Democrats and Democratic-Leaners: who would you rather drive across the country with? Here's the results: Clinton 51%, Obama 22%, Edwards 14%. This is interesting, in light of Hillary's appearance on Letterman last week. The question is, how likable is Hillary? The answer seems to be, she's likable amongst Democrats. Going on a long car drive is different from just meeting a person--you're much better off going with someone you like. But what about all voters? Hillary beats Giuliani in a head-to-head matchup, 48% to 39% on the long-car-drive question.

Things can change quickly, of course, and there's going to be a new documentary coming out on Hillary this fall by David Bossie and Dick Morris; and as I've argued before Giuliani is not going to be the nominee for the Republicans; but this shows that Hillary's likability might not be as much as a problem as one might think. At least as much as has been made of it with regards to Hillary's "negatives."

Newsweek had a piece a few months ago on this:

In a Gallup poll released last week, 50 percent said their opinion of the former First Lady was unfavorable. (Forty-six percent said they had a favorable view.) The "negative" is unprecedented for a non-incumbent presidential candidate—neither John Kerry nor Al Gore got such a high unfavorable rating in the Gallup poll at any point in their unsuccessful presidential bids.

A hot new book, The Political Brain, Emory psychology professor Drew Westen talks about manipulating voters' associations to create a positive image for a candidate.

In the introduction he writes:

The neural circuits charged with regulation of emotional states seemed to recruit beliefs that eliminated the distress and conflict partisans had experienced when they confronted unpleasant realities. And all this seemed to happen with little involvement of the neural circuits normally involved in reasoning.

The results show that when partisans face threatening information, not only are they likely to "reason" to emotionally biased conclusions, but we can trace their neural footprints when they do.

When confronted with potentially troubling political information, a network of neurons become active that produces distress. Whether this distress is conscious, or unconscious, or some combination of the two, we don't know. The brain registers the conflict between data and desire and begins to search for ways to turn off the spigot of unpleasant emotion.

But the political brain did something we didn't predict. Once partisans found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions shut off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn't seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating rewards circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased reasoning. These reward circuits overlap significantly with those activated when drug addicts get their "fix", giving new meaning to the term political junkie.

For people who are Hillary-haters (and as a colleague of mine said last week, "With Hillary, you either love her or you hate her"), it will be difficult for them to stomach voting for her. I believe her problem with a lack of likability might come to the fore much more in the general election. If that's the case, and she's the nominee, we might be facing a very negative general election campaign, with Hillaryland trying to drive the negatives up of the Republican candidate.

Here's Westen's response to a review of his book by David Brooks which is worth reading.