New PA poll gives Kasich, Rubio ray of hope in ‘ridiculous’ race
There is a storm of voter disgust raging in the word cloud lingering over the presidential election.
There is a storm of voter disgust raging in the word cloud lingering over the presidential election.
Pollsters at the Mercyhurst University in Erie asked 421 registered voters in Pennsylvania to pick a single word to describe the presidential campaign so far. They assembled those words into a cloud, with the most common words standing out.
"Ridiculous" leads the way. "Joke," "disgusting" and "embarrassing" also loom large in the cloud.
That sort of voter disgust may help explain the "good news - bad news" the pollsters found for the Democrats, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Clinton and Sanders each hold leads over the top two Republican candidates, real estate developer and reality television star Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, in hypothetical general election match-ups.
Clinton leads Trump 43 percent to 35 percent in Pennsylvania, a state that has not supported a Republican for president since 1988. She leads Cruz 45 percent to 42 percent.
Sanders leads Trump 49 percent to 37 percent and Cruz 48 percent to 40 percent.
That's the good news for the Democrats. The bad news is, Clinton and Sanders are trailing the other two Republican presidential candidates, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the poll shows.
Rubio leads Clinton 47 percent to 39 percent and Sanders 46 percent to 41 percent in the poll. Kasich leads Clinton 49 percent to 36 percent and Sanders 46 percent to 42 percent.
In a typical presidential election, those numbers would not matter since Rubio and Kasich have not been able to catch up to Trump and Cruz in the contests held so far for the Republican nomination.
They may matter this year ,though - because the Republican nomination may be determined not by the primaries and caucuses but by the party's convention, which will be held in Cleveland in July.
"This is the first time in many years that a contested convention is a real possibility for the Republicans," said Joseph Morris, director of the Mercyhurst Center for Applied Politics. "If this turns out to be the case, it's difficult to determine who will ultimately be chosen as the party's general election candidate. For Pennsylvanians, the choice is clear. Voters would much rather see the Republican Party nominate Rubio or Kasich than Trump or Cruz."
That doesn't mean Rubio or Kasich dominate with voters when they're asked which candidate would make the best president.
The poll found Clinton led on that question with 25 percent of all voters polled. The rest of the field trailed; Trump (16 percent), Sanders (15 percent), Kasich (13 percent), Cruz (11 percent) and Rubio (8 percent).
Voters in the poll, conducted via live telephone interviews between March 1 and March 11, listed the "economy/jobs" as the most pressing concern, followed closely by "terrorism/ISIS," the "way Washington operates," "healthcare policy" and "moral values."
The pollsters noted that the economy can be "arguably the single most important variable for forecasting the outcome of presidential elections."
Forty percent of the voters polled rated the economy as good, the first time that answer reached a plurality since before the pollsters started asking that question in October 2011.
Still, 59 percent of the voters said they "have just enough money to get by," which is relatively the same since 2011.
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@ByChrisBrennan