December26, 2018
Democrats and independents on 2020: Please, God, not Hillary
by Becket Adams
WashingtonExaminer.com
Democratic and independent voters are torn, according a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University survey.
They can't decide on whether they want someone shiny and new or someone tried and true to represent them in the 2020 presidential election. The only thing they’re all in agreement on is that they absolutely do not want two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to run again.
For this particular poll, which was conducted between Dec. 11 and 16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, the survey’s administrators tried something different. Rather than ask respondents to pick their top choice for 2020, they instead “tested which candidates now seem intriguing to voters, and who turns them off.”
Survey participants were given 11 options from which to choose. The poll, which surveyed 689 self-identified Democratic and independent voters, found that the overwhelming favorite was “someone entirely new,” (which is another way of saying "They ALL stink!") clocking in with a full 59 percent of respondents saying they’d be “excited” for that option. In contrast, only 11 percent of participants said they did not want a new face to run.
Meanwhile, a mere 15 percent said they would be “excited” for a third Clinton presidential run, while 70 percent of participants said she should not run again. (A full 52% of respondents volunteered that she should be shot. This was not an acceptable response, however, and was therefore not tabulated.)
Confusingly enough, however, respondents chose former Vice President Joe Biden, 76, as their second-top choice for 2020. Fifty-three percent said they'd be excited for him to run for president, while 24 percent said otherwise. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 77, came in third place with 36 percent of respondents saying they would be excited for him to make another go of it (though a much larger 41 percent said he shouldn’t run in 2020).
"The 'someone new' versus Joe Biden finding illustrates the generational divide within the Democratic Party dating back to Walter Mondale versus Gary Hart in 1984," said Suffolk Political Research Center director David Paleologos, referring to the candidate who lost to former President Ronald Reagan by an infamously large margin. "The test is which candidate can build on their core 'excitement' and not lose the voters of other Democrats who fall by the wayside."
In short, Democratic and independents voters are being a bit fickle. On the one hand, they want someone new for 2020. On the other hand, they want to be represented by septuagenarians with a combined 73 years in the nation’s capital.
Where respondents were in overwhelming agreement was on their opinion of Clinton, who they most definitely do not want to run — and likely fail — for a third time.
Indeed, of the 11 possible 2020 candidates provided by the survey administrators, the former secretary of state came in dead last, behind Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and even former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who hasn’t held public office since 2013 — a job he was originally elected to as a Republican.
Thirty percent of respondents said they were “excited” for the idea of O'Rourke running in a couple of years, while a smaller 13 percent said the opposite. Twenty-nine percent said they were excited for Harris, while 19 percent said she should not run in 2020. Booker garnered an "exciting" rating from 28 percent of respondents, while a smaller 19 percent said he also should not run. Even twenty percent of participants said they’d be excited for a Bloomberg campaign, while 36 percent said he should abstain from running.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-and-independents-on-2020-please-god-not-hillary
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