One of America's Greatest Pastimes, Early Polling...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

American's are an interesting bunch. Stubborn and fickle at the same time. Especially Republicans. But then again I question just why in the hell anyone is concerning themselves with the 2016 presidential race two years out? I guess it's because we're... Americans?

Public Policy Polling -

PPP's newest look at the Republican field for 2016 finds some big changes from our previous polling. Marco Rubio, who had led all of our polling since December, has dropped all the way to 6th place. Rand Paul now has the lead nationally, to go along with the leads he posted in our most recent Iowa and New Hampshire polls. And Ted Cruz has already hit double digits.

The numbers are: Paul 16, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Paul Ryan each at 13, Cruz at 12, Rubio at 10, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal at 4, and Susana Martinez at 2. Cruz has proven to be such a darling to the far right that he actually already leads among 'very conservative' voters with 20% to 18% for Paul and 17% for Ryan. Christie gets 24% with 'moderate' identifying Republicans but doesn't do better overall because he's at just 7% with 'very conservative' ones.

Rubio was at 21 or 22% on all of our polls between January and March but his support has now dropped to half that level. Meanwhile Paul has vaulted into the lead after starting the year at only 5% in our polling, perhaps owing to the positive attention he received from conservatives after his filibuster earlier this year. Christie and Bush have remained consistently in the 12-15% range in all of our polling.
The Republicans are looking more competitive with Hillary Clinton than they were in some of our earlier polling this year. She still leads all of the GOP hopefuls but in many of the cases it's by tight margins- 1 point over Chris Christie at 43/42, 2 points over Paul Ryan at 46/44, 3 points over Jeb Bush at 44/41, 5 points over Marco Rubio at 45/40, and 8 points over Rand Paul at 47/39. Obviously it's early but you can see a picture here that's been painted in many key Senate races over the last two cycles- the person with the most support from Republicans is also the weakest general election candidate.

Joe Biden does on average 6 points worse than Hillary against the various Republican possibilities. He trails Christie by 6 points at 45/39, Bush by 4 points at 45/41, and Ryan by 3 points at 46/43. He does at least manage ties with Paul and Rubio at 43% and 42% respectively.

Clinton continues to dominate the Democratic race, although her 40 point lead this month is down a bit from 50 and 46 points on our previous two polls. She's at 52% to 12% for Biden, 6% for Elizabeth Warren, 5% for Kirsten Gillibrand, and 3% for Cory Booker with no one else above 2%.

In a Clinton-less field Biden leads with 34% to 13% for Warren, 10% for Andrew Cuomo, and 4% for Booker with no one else above 3%. And in a field without either Clinton or Biden the leader for the first time is Elizabeth Warren who gets 20% to 11% for Cuomo, 8% for Booker, and 5% for Gillibrand. Full results here

Via: Memeorandum