Public service announcement: For now, you should ignore surveys testing potential Democrat/Republican matchups for the 2016 presidential election.
I’m referring to polls like The Washington Post-ABC News survey released last week, which made headlines with the finding that Hillary Clinton enjoys a big lead against Republicans like Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney. Other media organizations have also been releasing head-to-head polls like this, and more are sure to follow in the coming months.
I realize it’s tempting to believe that these head-to-head polls have at least a little bit of meaningful information in them. Poll numbers are irresistible to political obsessives like me, but it’s just too early for them to be useful in forecasting the general election.