A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are gaining in strength, while front-runner Donald Trump is undergoing some poll erosion. On the Democratic side, it still shows former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a sizeable lead nationally, but as another poll has indicate and the trend indicates her race with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party’s 2016 Presidential nomination is starting to tighten. In fact, trending suggests Sanders is on the brink of a classic political surge.
Ted Cruz has reached top-rank popularity among Republicans and Chris Christie’s favorability rating is most improved in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, while Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Jeb Bush all have stumbled in the battle for GOP hearts and minds.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton continues to far surpass Bernie Sanders in favorability among party regulars, and she’s vastly more popular within the Democratic Party than are any of the Republican candidates within the GOP base. Still, gender and racial gaps mark Clinton’s standings, and Sanders pushes back among young adults, independents and the better-off.
Movement is greatest among Republicans. Trump’s favorability rating within the GOP has dropped by 12 percentage points, from a high of 69 percent in November to 57 percent now; the decline has occurred almost exclusively among Republican women. Cruz, +7 points to 60 percent favorable, is +13 points among strong conservatives overall, a core GOP group; 76 percent now rate him favorably.
AND:
Reflecting the public’s general discontent with the state of politics, not one of these candidates has a majority favorable rating among all adults. Clinton and Sanders are close, at 48 and 44 percent, respectively. Cruz, Carson and Rubio are rated favorably by 42 to 40 percent of all adults; Trump, Christie and Bush by 35 percent. A crowd-topping 62 percent of Americans see Trump unfavorably; his only rival there is Bush, 58 percent negative.
Bill Clinton tops the popularity list with a 53 percent favorability rating – but that’s down by 10 points compared with spring 2014, as he’s re-entered the political fray on his wife’s behalf.
And there is no doubt about it now: the trending is evident. Hillary Clinton is starting to descend in the polls and the Democratic Party race for the nomination will become or now already is a real horserace. The conventional wisdom that she will definitely get the nomination could wind up in the end like much of the (often well-paid) conventional wisdom — quietly swept under the rug in the hopes no one will notice it was so visibly there. Note this New York Times piece:
As the first nominating contest approaches, Hillary Clinton’s commanding lead nationally in the Democratic primary has largely melted away, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
The tightened race between Mrs. Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is revealing a sharp generational divide within the Democratic Party, with primary voters under 45 favoring Mr. Sanders by a roughly 2-to-1 ratio.
Yet more than 7 in 10 Democratic voters — including most supporters of Mr. Sanders — still believe Mrs. Clinton will ultimately win the party’s nomination. Voters expressed deeper confidence in her ability to be an effective commander in chief and more of her supporters say their minds are made up compared with Mr. Sanders’s backers.
Over all, 48 percent of Democratic primary voters across the country support Mrs. Clinton, while 41 percent back Mr. Sanders, the poll found. Just a month ago, she led Mr. Sanders by 20 percentage points nationally.
Mr. Sanders’s shifting fortunes underscore the unsettled state of the presidential race in both parties with just three weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Previous contests have seen candidates rise and fall in the weeks before the first votes are cast, and national polls at this stage of the race are not necessarily predictive of the final outcome of the monthslong nominating battle. But Mr. Sanders’s surge has clearly unnerved the Clinton campaign, and she is responding aggressively.
And it’s clear there is a generational divide:
The generational divide on the Democratic side was more pronounced than even the split among voters of differing political ideology. In addition to his strong support among younger voters, Mr. Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, is backed by 55 percent of liberals, compared with 40 percent who support Mrs. Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton is boosted by older voters, who favor her by an even larger margin than younger voters favor Mr. Sanders. She fares better with moderates than Mr. Sanders does; 51 percent support her, while 33 percent back Mr. Sanders.
She also holds a double-digit lead among female voters, but the race is closer among men — 45 percent back Mr. Sanders, compared with 40 percent for Mrs. Clinton.
“I like the way he says the economy should be run,” said Jerry Auguste, 28, of Brooklyn, who works in retail. He said he was more with Mrs. Clinton at first, but has been leaning toward Mr. Sanders in the past month or so, “mainly because I’ve heard more of what he’s been saying about the economy and climate.”
About as many Democratic primary voters say Mr. Sanders shares their values as say Mrs. Clinton does. But Mrs. Clinton, who served as secretary of state in Mr. Obama’s administration, holds an edge in an important area: Some Democratic voters seem to have an easier time envisioning her in the White House.
I always say one poll does NOT a trend make. A lot of polls do — and averages of polls do. If you go here to Pollster on The Huffington Post you can see Hillary Clinton’s trending is not good. It’s pretty clear now that the Clinton campaign is trying to counter her erosion. The campaign has come under a lot of criticism for a speech by her daughter Chelsea criticizing Bernie Sanders. Now no longer does it seem it is inevitable that Clinton will be nominated, but polls indicate more than ever that it’s not inevitable she’ll be elected. (And remember: to the winning party goes the chance to appoint an estimated THREE Supreme Court justices so a lot for both parties is at stake)
You do get the feeling that in both parties there may be segments of take-my-ball-and-go-home-ism — Dems and Repubs who’ll sit out the election to teach their party a lesson for not selecting their candidate. Could a Michael Bloomberg be waiting in the wings to run as an indie?
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.