Thursday, August 20, 2015

Rubio, Kasich, Fiorina and Carson are doing the best in the battleground states in terms of net favorability

The Quinnipiac poll of battle ground states had some pretty interesting information in it.  Most notably, amongst registered voters of all political stripes, the top 4 names are the same in each of the states polled (Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania).  The four are Rubio, Kasich, Fiorina and Carson, who seem to run the gambit of the GOP, from moderate (Kasich) to establishment conservative (Rubio) and full-on Tea Party outsider (Carson).  And all of them have better numbers than both Clinton and Biden.

First, let's look at Florida:

Note that Trump is very near the bottom in a very key state.  He is beating Clinton in a head to head (43 vs. 41) but I think that is mainly because they actually hate her even more than they hate him!  Let's try not to make this a contest of which festering turd voters need to choose from, shall we?

And here is Ohio:

Not much of a shock that Kasich is on top here (though 17% of registered voters haven't heard of their own governor?).  Again, Trump is doing abysmally, even worse than Hillary (which is probably why she beats him here (43 vs. 38). 

And finally Pennsylvania:


Once again, the same four on top and Trump is way down at the bottom, losing to Hillary in a head to head 45 vs. 40).  Given the amount of negative press she has been getting recently, you'd think that Trump would be able to beat her at this point.

Also, I think we are at the point where we need to consider that Hillary might night be the nominee and Biden might be.  Unlike Hillary who has enormously negative net favorability in all three states, Biden is slightly positive, making him an even tougher target.  Having Trump, who is so disliked by the general population run against someone people are at least slightly positive on, will probably not end well for the GOP.  At this point it looks like Rubio, Kasich, Fiorina and Carson would be much better choices than Trump (though I don't think Carson is ready and Kasich might be too liberal for me) if we want to compete.

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