You can now see it happening: the races in both major political parties are tightening as the aggressive presidential nomination battles continue. A new NBC/WSJ Poll shows does not show continued skyrocketing growth for GOP front-runner Donald Trump and shows some more slippage for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her battle against Sen. Bernie Sanders and (some speculate) possibly Vice President Joe Biden:
Donald Trump and Ben Carson are running neck and neck in the national Republican presidential horserace, while Carly Fiorina is now tied for third place with Marco Rubio, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The poll adds credence to some analysts who are now suggesting that in the end the “anti-Trump” would well be Marco Rubio, who is conservative but could be a tougher candidate for the Dems due to his Hispanic background and his youth, in sharp contrast to the top three Democrats ranked in the poll. Other Democrats in the race barely register in the poll.
Thhe poll has bad news for the Clinton campaign — a bit jarring when the poll notes how much support she has lost.
And on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has lost ground to Bernie Sanders — she leads him by just seven points with Joe Biden in the race, and 15 points without the vice president. That’s down from Clinton’s 34-point lead over Sanders in July and her whopping 60-point lead in June.
In the GOP race, Trump is the first choice of 21 percent of Republican primary voters — followed by Carson at 20 percent and Rubio and Fiorina tied at 11 percent each.
There isn’t stellar news for the rest of the GOP Presidential nomination wannabes:
Jeb Bush, meanwhile, is at 7 percent, John Kasich at 6 percent and Ted Cruz at 5 percent. No other Republican gets more than 3 percent.
Back in July’s NBC/WSJ poll, Trump was in first place at 19 percent, Scott Walker (who exited the race on Monday) was second at 15 percent, Bush third at 14 percent and Carson fourth at 10 percent. Rubio was just at 5 percent, and Fiorina didn’t register at all in the poll.
Adding both first and second choices, Carson tops the current GOP field at 35 percent – followed by Trump at 31 percent, Fiorina at 28 percent, Rubio at 26 percent and Bush at 19 percent.
On the Democratic side:
In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton is the first choice of 42 percent of primary voters, Sanders is in second at 35 percent and Joe Biden third at 17 percent. No other Democrat gets more than 1 percent.When Biden – who is still mulling a campaign – is removed from the field, Clinton’s lead over Sanders grows to 15 points, 53 percent to 38 percent, which suggests that Biden’s entry would hurt Clinton more than Sanders.
Clinton had a 25 point lead over Sanders in July.
And, of course, what I note in most poll stories, I’ll note again.
Partisans and supporters of X, Y, or Z candidates and the candidates themselves will (like Donald Trump) scream to the rooftops polls that show them ahead — and question the accuracy or relevancy of polls that show them behind or losing support (only the favorable ones are accurate or meaningful). So this comes as no surprise:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has persistently trailed Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the Republican presidential polls, is questioning the accuracy of them showing him way behind.
“These polls really don’t matter,” Bush said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “They don’t filter out the people that aren’t going to vote. It’s just…an obsession, because it kind of frames the debate for people for that week.”
If his polls go up over the next month or two, let’s see if he repeats the same assertion (you can make good money on THIS bet).
comments aired Sunday, as a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of Republicans who say they’re likely to vote in next year’s GOP caucuses and primaries showed him lagging in a distant fifth behind Trump, the real estate developer and entertainer, and Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, who were tied for first –and trailing (but statistically tied with) Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
Bush told Fox host Chris Wallace that he’s taking a long view on the race and expects his poll numbers to rebound as he runs television ads. And, he said, he’s confident of his campaign’s ground game in New Hampshire.
Talking about a good “ground game” is a good point.
Taking a “long view” is good spin.
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.