A new Quinnipiac University survey puts former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at just 4 percent among Republicans — and find Republican surgeon Ben Carson would today beat former Secretary of State Hillary by 10 percent.
Jeb Bush’s support among Republicans nationally has plummeted to the low single digits in the latest Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday, as the former Florida governor’s campaign seeks to hit refresh with its “Jeb Can Fix It” tour.
Bush & Co. have been making it clear in recent days that they expected bad poll numbers after what even they acknowledged was a lackluster to terrible debate perforamnce. Bush has since launched his “I can fix it” reboot – but the slogan was widely mocked on the Internet. So if he has “a lot of cool things” he could do it he wasn’t running for President, he isn’t appearing too “cool” to many right now.
Donald Trump and Ben Carson, meanwhile, continued to lead the field, with Carson outperforming Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general-election matchup.
In the latest poll, conducted after last week’s third GOP debate in which Bush delivered a mediocre performance, just 4 percent of Republican and independent Republican-leaning voters said they would support Bush in their state’s primary. In the September survey, Bush earned 10 percent, trailing Trump, Carson and Carly Fiorina. And in terms of favorability, no one polled lower than Bush, at a net-negative of 33 points. Just 25 percent of all registered voters surveyed said they had a positive opinion of him, while 58 percent said they had a negative one.
Trump earned 24 percent from Republican voters this time, while Carson moved into a virtual tie at 23 percent. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio jumped into third place with 14 percent, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with 13 percent. Other candidates took in 3 percent or less support, with 9 percent undecided
The numbers on the Democratic side aren’t surprising — until you get to the numbers of how Clinton would fare in a match up with Carson:
Among Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters, Clinton bested Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to the tune of 53 percent to 35 percent, a 10-point jump for both from the same poll in September.
In general election matchups, Carson beat Clinton 50 percent to 40 percent, outdrawing the former secretary of state in the share of both men (55 percent to 35 percent) and of women (45 percent to 44 percent). Clinton also came up on the short end of hypothetical head-to-heads against Rubio (41 percent to 46 percent), Cruz (43 percent to 46 percent) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (43 percent to 46 percent), who drew less than Bush among Republican voters. Quinnipiac did not test a Bush-Clinton matchup.
The fact that Quiinnipiac didn’t do a Bush-Clinton matchup shows how far Bush’s political stock has fallen.But Hillary Clinton must be praying for a Trump candidacy:
Matched up against Trump, however, Clinton held a lead of 46 percent to 43 percent.
The numbers on Carson also suggest that some voters like a candidate who in rhetorical, ideological terms embodies Teddy Roosevelt’s advice of “talk softly and carry a big stick.” So does Trump, in a different way:
Overall, Carson earned the highest net favorability ratings of any candidate tested, at 49 percent favorable to 25 percent unfavorable (+24 positive), while Trump tied for the third lowest with another New Yorker, former Gov. George Pataki, at negative 19 points. Rubio had the second highest, at a net favorable of 14 points, followed by Fiorina at 10 points. Other candidates earned net positive numbers in the low single digits, negative single digits or in negative double digits, as in the case of Clinton (-10), Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (-11), former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (-13), former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (-16), former Virginia Sen. Jim Gilmore (-18) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (-25).
Carson is also seen as the most honest and trustworthy of the candidates, with 62 percent responding that he is and just 24 percent that he is not. Clinton and Trump have typically performed more poorly than their fellow candidates in other polls, with the trend continuing in Wednesday’s results. Just 36 percent saw Clinton as honest and trustworthy, compared to 60 percent who did not, while 38 percent saw Trump as honest and trustworthy and 58 percent did not.
The reality?
This is a tempestuous election cycle, and partisans on each side who are smugly saying a Clinton will be easy to defeat, or that a Trump or a Carson can’t get elected are addressing echo chambers more than an emerging reality — a seemingly changed reality of an electorate. Viewing the polity in a time capsule can be done, but it might be unwise this time around.
RNC and DNC take note I know that ideological cable and radio talk show hosts and many political pundits with an ideological vested interest in who wins sure won’t.
graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.