If you thought you liked Hillary Clinton before, you may not in 2016. So claims data guru Nate Silver today at FiveThiryEight where he examines the curious case of how everyone loves the soon-to-be-former secretary of state.
According to Silver, people love Clinton now because she’s essentially been non-partisan in her role as secretary. Meaning she hasn’t been as vocal on the campaign or dealing with “local” issues, but has instead been working on foreign policy and international business. This happens to be something the regular voters and pollers don’t appear to notice. Hence Clinton is incredibly popular at the moment!
“Over the course of her long career, the public’s views of Mrs. Clinton have shifted along with her public role. When she has been actively engaged in the hand-to-hand combat that characterizes election campaigns and battles in Congress, her favorability ratings have taken a hit, only to recover later.”
If she runs for office in 2016, she’ll inevitably become more polarized into partisan political discussion. As Silver notes, “[a] secretary of state is not necessarily above partisan criticism, but attacking a secretary of state can potentially backfire on the opposition party.”
While we’re mulling over what the 2016 election could be, we’re still interested to see what Clinton plans on doing. Her election PAC has quietly started sending out 2016 donation calls, but offering little else in terms of concrete plans. But to think that we’ll like her less if she’s a candidate, or even president, is disheartening. We’ll always have a soft spot for her her ability to end silly memes on the Internet with Ryan Gosling.