Talk Elections

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?

45-46

...

45-37 Clinton/Christie
50-38 Clinton/Ryan
50-34 Clinton/Rubio

40-43 Biden/Christie
45-42 Biden/Ryan
45-38 Biden/Rubio

28-45 Cuomo/Christie
37-42 Cuomo/Ryan
37-37 Cuomo/Rubio

From February 27 - March 4, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,944 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points. Live interviewers call land lines and cell phones.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-centers/polling-institute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1861

Considering that these are the likely "numbers where the race is right now" nationally, then Hillary's leads against Rubio and Ryan in Georgia and Texas (which PPP showed) might be accurate.

GA would be 7-12% more GOP than the nation, using PPP's and Quinnipiac's numbers.

TX would be 14% more GOP than the nation ...

and so on ...

LA would be 12 points more GOP, KS would be 20 points more GOP than the nation, comparing PPP's and Quinnipiacs numbers.

It would mean that if Hillary won nationally by 4 like Obama, LA would be GOP+8.

So, a strong improvement for Hillary over the Romney+17 figure.

In WI on the other hand, Ryan is down by only 8 in the PPP poll, but down 12 nationally.

This might be an indicator of a home-state effect, if he ran for President himself, rather than being just VP.

In NJ, Christie does also 4 points better than nationally.

Here we can even compare 2 Quinnipiac polls.

Also, a possible home-state effect.

There was another NJ poll by PPP though, which showed Hillary 12% ahead of Christie. So, this would make NJ 4% more DEM than the nation.

The crosstabs are consistent with PPP's polling in terms of the collapse of the age gap, and the fact that the GOP's strongest group now is the middle aged rather than olds.  Obama no longer being on the ticket seems to have caused a reversion to the 90s in terms of the age breakdown.

For example, in Christie vs. Clinton:
age 18-34: Clinton +18
age 35-54: Christie +3
age 55+: Clinton +12

And this basically holds for all the other matchups as well.  Doesn't matter whether it's Clinton, Cuomo, or Biden on the Dem side, or Christie, Rubio, or Ryan on the GOP.  The GOP is consistently doing better with the middle aged than they are with olds.

Also, the one demographic in which Rubio does slightly better than both Christie and Ryan: Hispanics.  Rubio wins 24% of Hispanics against Clinton, whereas Christie wins 23% of them against Clinton and Ryan wins 21% against Clinton.  Not much of a diff, but Rubio is doing worse than the other two in pretty much every other demo, so he's got to take what he can get.

Finally, it's also fun to look at how much bigger the gender gap is with Clinton on the ticket compared to Biden:

Christie/Clinton:
men: Christie +3
women: Clinton +19
gender gap = 22%

Rubio/Clinton:
men: Clinton +2
women: Clinton +28
gender gap = 26%

Ryan/Clinton:
men: Ryan +1
women: Clinton +24
gender gap = 25%

Christie/Biden:
men: Christie +6
women: Biden +1
gender gap = 7%

Rubio/Biden:
men: Biden +2
women: Biden +11
gender gap = 9%

Ryan/Biden:
men: tie
women: Biden +7
gender gap = 7%

Christie/Cuomo:
men: Christie +25
women: Christie +9
gender gap = 16%

Rubio/Cuomo:
men: Rubio +11
women: Cuomo +9
gender gap = 20%

Ryan/Cuomo:
men: Ryan +14
women: Cuomo +3
gender gap = 17%

Hillary would also make Alaska trending more DEM:

In PPP's Alaska poll, Clinton led Rubio by 1 and trailed Christie by 1.

This makes AK about 9-14 points more GOP than the nation.

But it was 18 points in 2012.

MT: was 18 points more GOP than the nation in 2012

Would now be 19-24 points more GOP, with Hillary.

KY was R+26 in 2012.

Would be just R+8 now in the Hillary vs. Rubio scenario.

So, KY would have been within 4 points, if Hillary won by 4 nationally like Obama.

Just looked at the crosstabs of this some more, and compared with the demographic breakdown of the 2012 exit polls.  It's clear that the gains that Clinton makes in "Clinton vs. X" as compared to "Obama vs. Romney" is in certain demographics (which overlap): white women, white Protestants, and voters over 55.  Those are the demos where Clinton is really overperforming Obama's showing in 2012.

I mean, for example, the 2012 exit poll had Romney winning white Protestants by a whopping 39 point margin (69%-30%).  But this poll has Christie winning white Protestants by just 16 points (49%-33%, which does leave a fair number undecided), whereas the overall victory margin for the Dems is only going up by 4 points.

Heck, even Biden basically matches Obama's performance among white Protestants, when pitted against Christie....despite doing 7 points worse overall.

These early polls are useless because there's rarely party unity for the party with a contested primary which always skews the numbers(ex. Christie at 74% of R's).

Pretty obvious why that is...