A new survey finds that the two candidates leading the Republican and Democratic presidential fields — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — stir the most fear among U.S. voters as potential nominees for president.
Voters in the latest USA Today/Suffolk University poll were given four words — enthusiastic, satisfied, dissatisfied or scared — to choose from to describe how they would feel with Clinton, Trump or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as their party’s nominee for president. According to the survey, most voters indicated they would be “scared” if Trump, the brash GOP front-runner, or Clinton, a former New York senator and secretary of state, secured the Republican and Democratic nomination.
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Thirty-eight percent of respondents were fearful of a Trump nomination, including 62 percent of Democratic voters, 17 percent of Republicans and one-third of independents, while 33 percent of voters fear Clinton as the Democratic nominee, including 60 percent of Republicans, 8 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of independents.
Meanwhile, Sanders, the socialist senator who soared to victory in the New Hampshire primary, won the Democratic nod, 31 percent of voters said they would be satisfied, compared to 28 percent who feared such a scenario. Interestingly, far fewer Republicans, 45 percent, feared Sanders as the Democratic nominee than Clinton, which suggests GOP voters might view Sanders as the easier candidate to beat in a general election. Twenty-eight percent of independents would be scared of Sanders as the Democratic nominee and 12 percent of Democrats would.
Overall, a combined 56 percent of respondents picked “scared” or “dissatisfied” to describe their feelings towards Trump securing the GOP nomination while just 39 percent described their potential feelings as “enthusiastic” or “satisfied.” For Clinton, 54 percent of voters said her nomination would elicit a negative reaction in them, while 42 percent said they would react positively.
The USA Today/Suffolk University survey of 1,000 likely U.S. voters was conducted Feb. 11-15. Results contain a margin of error plus or minus 3 percent.
