2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Latest poll of African Americans: Hillary 82%, Sanders 6%, Webb 3% [View all]Historic NY
(37,449 posts)Clinton is in pretty good shape when it comes to potential general election match ups as well. She leads all of the potential Republican candidates by anywhere from 3 to 13 points, comparable to a month ago when her advantages over them ranged from 3 to 7
points. The Republican who comes closest to Clinton is Rand Paul, who trails by 3 at 45/42. Also coming close are Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker all of whom trail by an identical 5 point margin at 46/41.
By far the worst performing Republican against Clinton is Donald Trump, who trails 50/37. The general electorate takes even greater issue with his comments about John McCain than the GOP one, with just 16% of the overall population agreeing with his comments while 60% say they disagree. Trump could definitely make a splash in the general running as an independent at this point though. He gets 23%, taking almost exclusively from Jeb Bush, and leaving Clinton with a 43/25 advantage. Independent voters are a three way tie in that scenario with Clinton and Trump each getting 29% and Bush at 28%. And it's a measure of Bush's difficulties on the right that with 'very conservative' voters Trump actually gets 44% to 41% for Bush and 6% for Clinton.
Rounding out the match ups with Clinton she leads Mike Huckabee (46/40) by 6, Ben Carson (47/39), Chris Christie (46/38), and
Ted Cruz (48/40) all by 8, and Carly Fiorina (47/37) by 10.
We also tested Bernie Sanders against the key Republicans and he trails all of them except Trump. His deficits are 7 points against Jeb Bush (44/37), 5 points against Marco Rubio (41/36), and 1 point against Scott Walker (40/39). Against Trump, Sanders leads 47/37. On average Sanders does 8 points worse than Clinton against the Republicans in these head to head match ups.