A new CNN/ORC poll shows both Republican businessman Donald Trump and Democrat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton maintaining their leads. The poll provides further evidence of Trump taking hold of the GOP, with many Republicans increasingly comfortable with him as the head of their ticket. The Democratic race shows a slight tightening. A CBS/New York Times poll finds Trump and Clinton are generally viewed unfavorably — and even broke the poll’s history on how unlikable they are to many voters.
In the CBS/NYT poll, the Republican Party got the lowest favorable rating in the poll’s history.
Donald Trump continues to be the top choice of Republican voters in the race for their party’s nomination, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.
The poll finds little appetite for replacing the delegate leader and front-runner with another candidate at the convention or through a third-party run, but most of those opposed to Trump’s candidacy continue to pine for another option.
With the field whittled to just three candidates, 47% of Republicans say they’d most like to see Trump win their party’s nomination, about the same as the 49% who said they would be most likely to support him in February.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz follows at 31%, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich the preferred choice of 17% of GOP voters.
And boy are GOPers increasingly wild about Trump:
Trump tops the enthusiasm race as well, with 40% saying they would be enthusiastic about a Trump candidacy compared with 28% who would be that excited about Cruz and 19% about Kasich.
AND:
While the overall findings suggest few Republicans want to replace their party’s delegate leader with someone else, those views vary widely based on whether a voter prefers Trump or not.
Six-in-10 Republican voters overall say that if no candidate wins a majority of delegates to the Republican convention through the primaries and caucuses, delegates should vote for the candidate who had the most support through those votes. That figure stands at 82% among Trump backers, but just 40% among those who do not back Trump
And so you have it — further evidence that the “he’ll never be nominated” refrain of some self-assured pundits increasingly looks a bit premature. And now we’re hearing “he can’t beat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders” said with similar self-assurance by many pundits and supporters of Clinton and Sanders (who each insist in the end the other Democrat could never beat Trump but their preferred candidate can.”
On the Democratic side:
Democrats are more apt to see their own party as united, 38% say so, while 44% say it’s divided now but will unite by November and just 15% feel the party won’t be united come November
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And Sanders would be the stronger candidate against Trump, winning by 20 points, versus Clinton’s 12 points.
The CBS/NYT poll suggests both Trump and Clinton aren’t winning the hearts of many voters — suggesting there will be a big segment of voters holding their noses when they vote for them:
More than half of the states have held a primary or caucus, and registered voters nationwide now hold negative opinions of the political parties’ current frontrunners. More than half of voters have unfavorable views of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump; each has a net negative rating in the double-digits.
And they have made polling history:
Compared to frontrunners in previous presidential primary races, Trump and Clinton’s unfavorable ratings (57 percent and 52 percent respectively) are the highest in CBS News/New York Times Polls going back to 1984, when CBS began asking this question.
If there is a common thread in the polling results, it’s this: independents think both Trump and Clinton smell:
Perhaps, not surprisingly, most Democrats have negative views of Trump and a majority of Republicans view Clinton unfavorably. But more than half of independents have unfavorable views of both candidates. Clinton is viewed more positively by members of her own party than Trump is by his. Six in 10 Democrats have a favorable opinion of Clinton; just about half of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Trump.
And aroma many voters feel is coming from both parties doesn’t resemble roses, either:
In addition, Americans don’t hold especially favorable views of the country’s two major political parties — although the Democratic Party fares better. Forty-six percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, compared to just 28 percent who view the Republican Party that way — matching the lowest rating ever in CBS News/New York Times Polls.
Sixty-six percent of Americans view the Republican party unfavorably, a record high in CBS News polling.
And bad news for the GOP when it comes to independents (who many conservatives dismiss as low information voters, people who aren’t bright enough to adhere to an ideology immediately and as political trojan horses secretly belonging to the other side, just as moderates are always painted as “mushy”):
Also, while just 13 percent of Democrats view their own party negatively, far more Republicans – 39 percent – hold a negative view of their party. Independents have unfavorable views of both parties, particularly the Republican Party.
And, here again, Sanders would do better than Clinton against Trump, the poll finds:
When Democratic frontrunner Clinton is matched up against the Republican candidates, she does best against Trump. Clinton has a 10-point lead over him among registered voters, but her lead narrows to just three points against Ted Cruz…At 15 points, Democrat Sanders’ lead over Trump is larger than Clinton’s, partly due to his stronger support among independents.
The Cruz campaign will likely use this poll as it tries a what-some-consider-fruitless effort to dump Trump.
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.