New Hampshire Focus Groups Reveal Possible Problems for Bush, Clinton [View all]

[brooklynite]

Bloomberg:

Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, the presumptive establishment frontrunners for the 2016 presidential nomination, may be facing real problems within their parties.

In Bloomberg Politics-Purple Strategies focus groups convened this week in New Hampshire, even likely Democratic primary voters who are ardent Clinton supporters said they are closely following and are turned off by her handling of a controversy over her use of private rather than government e-mail while she served as secretary of state. And several said she should turn over her private e-mail server to a neutral third party for review.

And some underpinnings of Bush’s general election appeal—his family’s legacy of political service, a perceived openness to liberalizing immigration policy and support of Common Core education standards—have led several likely Republican primary voters to conclude they can't support him, and that there’s probably nothing Bush can do to change their minds. None said they’d back Bush if they were voting today.

...snip...

Likely Democratic presidential primary voters in the second focus group were overwhelmingly supportive of Clinton. Even though some said they’d like to see other Democrats run in the primaries to encourage healthy debate, none suggested any alternatives could beat Clinton.