A new poll shows Vice President Joe Biden would do better in the general election than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It should help spur on the nervous Democrats who feel a)Hillary Clinton is not a stellar candidate, b)they’d be better off going with Joe Biden who has carved out a favorable image c)Clinton’s problem is that some don’t trust her and her honesty while Biden’s problem isn’t trust but at times being a little too honesty verbally.
Here’s one more reason to continue speculating about whether Vice President Joe Biden will enter the presidential race: he polls better nationally against the leading three Republican candidates than Hillary Clinton, and has a higher favorability rating, too.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, if Biden was the democratic candidate, he would beat Donald Trump by eight points (48 – 40 percent), former Florida Governor Jeb Bush by six points (45 – 39) and Senator Marco Rubio by three points (44 – 41). Clinton only beats Trump by four points (45 – 41), Bush by two points (42 – 40) and Rubio by one point (44 – 43).
Eighty-three percent of Democrats view Biden favorably, compared to 76 percent and 54 percent who approve of Clinton and Vermont Senator Sanders, respectively. Among all registered voters, Biden has a 48 percent favorability rating, while Clinton came in at 39 percent and Sanders at 32 percent.
“Note to Biden: They like you, they really like you, or they like you more than the others,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a press release accompanying the poll. “If he is sitting on the fence, his scores in the matchups and his favorability ratings may compel him to say, ‘Let’s do this.’”
The good news for Clinton is that she’s still leading the race to become the Democratic nominee—45 percent of Democrats polled would choose Clinton as the party nominee, 22 percent would choose Sanders and 18 percent would choose Biden. No other Democrat polls above 1 percent.
Unlike many pundits, I know punditry is partially informed guesswork and political intuition. If I had to predict now, I’d predict that at the last minute Biden does not run.
A new CNN story says Biden isn’t sure he has the “emotional fuel” to run. He or she who ISN’T SURE about having the emotional fuel is setting he or she and his or her family up for a tough nearly two years.
On the other hand, concerned Democrats and his late son reportedly urging him to run could tilt it the other way. I suspect in the end, he won’t. If you don’t sense the fuel and know how it works, it can be daunting.
UPDATE: And he isn’t sure his family wants him to run.
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.