Talk Elections

Sanders outperforms Clinton in general-election matchups

The NBC/WSJ/Marist polls also show that Sanders outperforms Clinton in hypothetical general-election matchups in these two presidential battleground states - something other surveys have found, too.

In Iowa:

Clinton leads Trump by eight points among registered voters (48 percent to 40 percent), but Sanders is ahead of him by 13 (51 percent to 38 percent);

Cruz tops Clinton by four points (47 percent to 43 percent), but Sanders beats him by five (47 percent to 42 percent);

And up Rubio is up by five points over Clinton (47 percent to 42 percent), while he's tied with Sanders (44 percent to 44 percent).

In New Hampshire:

Clinton is ahead of Trump by just one point (45 percent to 44 percent), but Sanders tops him by 19 points (56 percent to 37 percent);

Cruz beats Clinton by four points (48 percent to 44 percent), but Sanders leads him by another 19 points (55 percent to 36 percent);

And Rubio bests Clinton by 12 points (52 percent to 40 percent), while Sanders leads him by nine points (50 percent to 41 percent).

The primary reason why Sanders tests better in these general-election matchups is due to his stronger performance with independent voters.

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http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/poll-neck-neck-2016-races-iowa-new-hampshire-n493361

So much to the electability argument.

Hillary is a walking trainwreck.

Interesting also that PPP and Marist both have Sanders leading Trump by about 20% in NH.

But there's a huge gap between the 2 pollsters with Hillary: PPP has her ahead by 14, Marist only by 1.

No, they polled them.

But the fact is: Hillary sucks.

If she can't win the low energy Moderate Hero state of New Hampshire against Cruz...

Yeah, this looks off - but it only shows Hillary's tremendous weakness among Independents - which NH is full of (50% of GE voters).

Also, we are now having a pattern: Sanders polls much better than Hillary in states where he has a name recognition like Hillary, near 100%.

Hillary would make a winnable race unnecessarily close and turning it into a 2000-like fiasco and trust me, you don't want that to happen again. The US is still too incompetent in handling close elections, even 16 years later. Bernie OTOH would beat the GOP in a landslide ...

You're right that Hillarys problem is independents hate her. Also, Bernie Sanders has the outsider appeal of Donald Trump without the racial, religious, or sex based polarization.

Besides, Bernie would present himself as a high-energy alternative and man for the working people, especially against Martin Shkreli-like locust capitalist Trump. He would crush him like a bug.

Whereas with Hillary you get a disaster of a candidate, who stands for nothing really ... and with her, Democrats would be heading for the abyss with eyes wide open.

Wow, this looks exactly like PPP's NH poll... not.

Hillary's personal baggage is causing her to underperform what a Generic D would get in these states, I'm looking at Sanders as to what a Dem should be getting in these states considering the fundamentals.

I doubt these polls will hold up against Cruz, but he does perform better in Iowa against Clinton.

Dems must keep focus on Trump, should he be nominee, Dems will do great.

no fav/unfav numbers for the candidates???

Cruz has yet to be attacked for his extreme views, Trump's attacks by fellow GOP are nothing like Clinton's to come attacks. That said, Hillary would have real problems against an establishment GOP.

Bernie hasn't faced the attacks the other candidates have, so his name recognition means nothing. If he made it to the general, Trump would go all out on him, calling him a communist, not to mention using subtle, (or even blatant) anti-semitic rhetoric. He would be destroyed.

Clinton beating Trump by just 1 in New Hampshire? Jesus that's sad if true.

So NH is more democratic than everywhere except D.C.? You are beyond delusional.

LMAO

IA has been worrying me for some time now. I don't expect Clinton to win the state in the general election, it's a tilt R state in 2016. Those NH numbers are terrible for her, though. Anyway, it's still early...

Not surprising that the only people who think Sanders is more electable than Clinton are foreigners who have no idea how Americans think.

Sanders has had literally ZERO negative media coverage. The Republicans are all praising him because they want a geriatric extremist whose campaign is run by hapless amateurs to be their opponent. Despite all this, he's on average doing the same or only slightly better than Clinton.

Marist is just warming up. It was shaky at first in 2008 and 2012.

Sanders outperforming Clinton in matchups is no different than Carson outperforming Bush in matchups. It wouldn't go down that way.

Did they poll enough Blaxicasians!?


Maybe "trillions of dollars in spending" and "raising taxes on the middle class" are winning arguments in Soviet Austria?

What.

Sorry but that just isn't true and you know it. He's received plenty of negative coverage in recent weeks. Hell, every time there's a debate he gets slammed and Hillary gets praised. He got plenty of negative coverage over the data breach thing too initially but his campaign managed to spin that story around on the DNC rather brilliantly in the end (and nobody is more surprised about that than me).

And while paying a lot of attention to general election polls this far out is silly, Sanders performing like 20 points better or whatever in the two swing states that are paying the most attention to the race so far is definitely kind of interesting if nothing else.

I know you're sort of playing a role here though so do you, my friend...

He's definitely not "slammed" every time there's a debate. The consensus has been that he's done fairly well at them, as far as I can tell. Of all the candidates running for president, he hasn't had anywhere near the amount of vetting or negative press. I honestly can't think of any major negative stories about it, other than the data breach. If, god forbid, he becomes the nominee, all these pro-Bernie Republicans and independents will not stick with him once they hear that he's going to raise their taxes and grow the budget by 18 trillion dollars.

Though it's not like Sanders hasn't received any media coverage at all, we have to agree on the fact that Hillary not only receives far more coverage than him (whether it's positive or negative), but also that she's also the official punching bag of the GOP. Plus they are early polls, it's not like they are going to matter in months.

They matter if they are being used by candidates in a primary for electability arguments. Basing a campaign around the idea that a certain candidate polls best against Republicans, and then dropping in the polls against Republicans, could backfire with primary voters.