Last month, the Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co found that Hillary Clinton “remains the prohibitive frontrunner to win the 2016 Iowa presidential caucuses,” with support from 53 percent of of likely Democratic caucus-goers. No other Democrat drew more than 10 percent.

Among the Selzer poll’s larger respondent group of likely voters in the 2014 elections, Clinton led every Republican but Mitt Romney in a hypothetical 2016 matchup, despite having “upside down” favorability numbers (47 percent favorable/49 percent unfavorable). If Clinton leads most Republicans among the 2014 Iowa electorate, my hunch is she would have an even bigger lead among Iowans who vote in presidential elections.  

However, the “Hillary’s Iowa problem” narrative found voice in a feature by Jennifer Jacobs and Jason Noble for yesterday’s Sunday Des Moines Register.  

Headlined, “Grassley gains power; Clinton faces headwinds,” the Jacobs and Noble piece included this strange assessment:

If Iowa’s U.S. Senate race proved anything, it’s that ticket-splitting voters here have a predilection for candidates with a personality they relate to – which could mean a tough row for Democrat Hillary Clinton if she decides to run for president in 2016, activists said.

Really? If I had to list a dozen things Iowa’s U.S. Senate race proved, that wouldn’t make the cut. Here’s how Jacobs and Noble fleshed out the argument:

Democratic and Republican strategists have said the 2014 U.S. Senate race hinged on likability. The lesson: The candidates who do best in Iowa are candid and relatable, yet not undisciplined, strategists said. […]

When it comes to the White House, especially, Iowans want to love the person before they turn over the keys. And they don’t fall for a candidate because of his or her policy statements.

Clinton would need to master the ability to express herself and talk about herself without coming off as too self-centered, they said.

True, Republicans and conservative dark money groups were able to portray Joni Ernst as much more likable than Bruce Braley. But Braley was largely unknown to Iowans before the Senate campaign began. In contrast, just about everyone already has an opinion about Hillary Clinton, and the Register’s own polling does not bear out the claim that she is too “unlikable” to win here. Almost every other Iowa poll I’ve seen in the past year shows her an overwhelming favorite among Democrats and leading most Republicans.

Would Hillary Clinton be a lock to carry Iowa in the 2016 general election? Of course not. For one thing, she probably wouldn’t need Iowa to reach 270 electoral votes, so there would be no reason for her to build the kind of ground game Barack Obama had in Iowa in 2012. The Republican nominee will need to win some states Obama carried, so probably will fund a decent GOTV operation here.

But I reject the premise that Ernst’s victory creates any new “headwinds” for Hillary Clinton. Ernst beat Braley in a Republican wave year that saw the GOP win nearly every competitive Senate contest nationwide. Roughly 400,000 Iowans who didn’t vote this year will vote in the next presidential election. They will likely include more young people, more women, and more minorities.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Katherine Miller wrote an excellent takedown of the new spin that Bill and Hillary Clinton were the big losers of the midterm elections (because they appeared at rallies for many Democrats who later lost). Excerpt:

The reasons given so far for the Republican wave have included: the widespread unpopularity of President Obama, good Republican candidates and campaigns in key races, bad Democratic candidates and campaigns in key races, a failure to turn out core Democratic constituencies that left the electorate significantly older and more conservative. No one has really argued that Mitt Romney’s surrogacy drove the Republican wave, as though he were Ursula at the end of The Little Mermaid.

And yet, the reverse idea has been applied to the Clintons.

The Clintons, together, campaigned about as much as Romney did, individually. These ranged from people like Martha Coakley – who by the time Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton got to her was already expected to lose to a Republican in Massachusetts – to people in closer races like Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (winner) and Rep. Bruce Braley (loser). Their top target was Alison Lundergan Grimes, the daughter of a prominent Clinton ally, the beneficiary of a lot of Hollywood money, especially from a top Clinton fundraiser, and the subject of polling that made the race look closer than it ultimately was.

The idea of the Romney spreadsheet actually throws into perfect relief the mad logic in the idea that the Clintons lost last week. The entire notion obscures the real value of surrogates: mostly fundraising, plus earned media.