While real estate mogul Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton top their respective parties, it’s Vice President Joe Biden who comes out on top in the general election, according to a poll of national voters released Thursday morning.
The Vice President has yet to declare a third run for the presidency, but that hasn’t hurt his appeal among voters, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
Among all registered voters, Biden beats Republican frontrunner Trump by 8 points, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by 6 points and barely edges out Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by 3 points.
Biden also has the best favorability rating of all candidates regardless of party at 48 percent positive to 39 percent negative.
Clinton beats Trump by 4 points; Bush by 2 points; and Rubio by only 1 percent.
Sanders also narrowly edged out Trump and Bush while he lost to Rubio by 1 point.
The poll found Trump and Clinton also lead each party’s “No Way” list of candidates who voters say they would never support at 26 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
The poll was conducted from August 20 to 25 among 1,563 national voters by live phone calls to cell phones and landlines. The national margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percent. Among the voters, 666 were Republicans with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percent while 647 were Democrats with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percent.
It looks like most people like plain-speaking candidates, even if they occasionally offend or put their foot in their mouth. Certainly the politically-correct, micro-aggression crowd has become tiresome and a clear impediment to actually discussing the nation’s problems.
Clinton could improve in this respect. In the video with BLM, she told them what many in this forum were saying, basically “get a plan”. It was good advice, it was gutsy (for Clinton) to give it, and it improved my opinion of her ability.
Republicans picked McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012 because General Election polls showed they had the best chance.
At this point, is a poll like this about anything but tribalism and name recognition, with a slight addition of positive/negative to the name recognition?
They did have the best chance. It just wasn’t a good chance. Biden is a good chance.
Oh, I’m sure that were he to become a credible candidate, the ensuing mud bath would quickly have Joe’s numbers at or below Hillary’s. All those gaffes would resurface in a heartbeat, and a half-dozen pseudo scandals would hit the fan.
My question of Hillary at this point is: would enough women come out to vote for her to make up for the Democratic dudes that won’t, or the Republican dudes that might not have made it to the polls otherwise? She won’t win the personality contest – even or especially against a doofus like Jeb. Can she get people to vote in a low-energy campaign?