Embattled Hillary Clinton continues to lead all challengers in 2016 presidential polls, but a new survey finds that she could be in trouble if and when the primary race narrows to just two Democrats.
In a larger than normal poll of nationwide Democratic primary and caucus goers, Zogby Analytics finds that Clinton leads with 46 percent, with Vice President Joe Biden emerging as her nearest challenger at 13 percent.
But, pollster John Zogby told Secrets, “my polling shows that one opponent could go neck-and-neck with her.” His numbers show a potential 46 percent for Clinton versus 35 percent for a challenger.
“Her combined opposition is scoring 35 percent, which essentially puts the referendum on Mrs. Clinton already at 46 percent to 35 percent. One serious challenger can scarf up that 35 percent and only need to do a slightly better than even split among the undecided voters to make this competitive,” said Zogby.
And, he added, an amazing 20 percent of Democrats are undecided, shocking because Clinton is universally known.
“I have been doing this business a very long time and the poll does reveal some concerns for the former first lady already. For starters, one in five Democrats (20 percent) is still undecided — meaning they are not convinced about a woman that has 100 percent name recognition,” said Zogby.
Plus, he said, she appears to be losing younger voters and progressives. “She now only receives 44 percent of self-described liberals — vs. 47 percent among the other candidates combined (with 9 percent undecided). And her numbers among first globals (those voters born between 1979 and 1996, who number 390 in our sample) are a deficit of 47 percent for other candidates to her 38 percent, with 15 percent undecided.”
Asked about her performance at Tuesday’s press conference on the email scandal, Zogby had further bad news.
“I think Hillary Clinton’s news conference was probably a net negative for her. Among detractors, everything will appear to be insufficient, dodging, arrogant, and conspiratorial. Among supporters there will continue to be a lot head-scratching as in, ‘Do we really want to go through this all over again? Isn’t there someone else out there?'” said Zogby, who writes the Secrets Weekly Obama Report Card, published on Saturdays.
“She faces an even bigger problem with her weak defense of the Clinton Global Initiative money. That is where the steady drips can turn into a tsunami,” he added.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
