Pollsters looking to the 2016 candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton believe she will be much tougher for a primary opponent to beat, battle-tested in 2008 and determined not to make the same mistakes made in losing to Barack Obama.
Top GOP pollster Ed Goeas, for example, said that Clinton’s loss to Obama will prompt her campaign to fix 2008 errors, making her much stronger and harder for a challenger like Sen. Elizabeth Warren to knock off.
“In 2008, she won a majority of the delegates in the primary states,” he said. “She lost the campaign, quite frankly, or the nomination, by being outworked in caucus states,” said Goeas.
“That’s something I’m sure is not going to go unmissed by the Clinton campaign,” he added.
What’s more, he said, Republicans expect that Clinton will get her messaging correct, and provide the type of economic outlook and focus that most Democratic pollsters are urging.
Discussing the most recent political battleground poll he conducts with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake during a media roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, he suggested that a liberal-progressive challenge from Warren could force Clinton into a bad place.
“She can’t go into the general election being perceived to be a twin of Obama on the role of government,” he said. “A race against Warren could take her there.”
Lake noted that in every state, Clinton beats all likely Democratic challengers by a wide margin. What’s more, she said, voters have a good sense of who Clinton is and what she stands for, giving her a good place to start the 2016 presidential primary race.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
