WBUR:
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are locked in a tight contest for the New Hampshire Democratic primary, according to a new WBUR poll (topline, crosstabs). The poll finds Sanders edging Clinton by a narrow margin, pulling 35 percent support to Clinton’s 31 percent. Joe Biden would earn 14 percent support, were he to jump in the race.
Sanders’ lead is within the poll’s margin of error, but it is the fifth consecutive poll of New Hampshire showing Sanders with at least a nominal lead. The poll also looked at support for Lincoln Chafee, Jim Webb and Martin O’Malley, and found them largely unfamiliar to voters and drawing little support.
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I wonder if Hillary’s support would rise if he was no longer an option, or if the vote share would go relatively equally to both candidates. It also shows you that this is likely his ceiling, third place to Hillary and the socialist, barring a major meltdown over at Camp Clinton. This is despite the fact that he is actually our strongest general election candidate right now.
…of Biden vs. potential GOP nominees. On what basis do you say he is our strongest general candidate?
Showing that he is currently the strongest,for a general election. I am agnostic on the Biden candidacy itself, I really love the guy, but I just don’t see it happening for a variety of reasons, and I am not sure how sustainable this polling is.
than just before he or she is actually a candidate. Personally, I don’t think BIden is going to run, and I think it would be a mistake if he did. His last two forays into presidential politics have been markedly unsuccessful; not sure why anyone thinks this time would be so different.
Which is why I want to see polls where he’s not on there. I don’t think he’ll run and I don’t want him to run, I love him too much to see him get crucified by the media which will turn on him as soon as he announces. And if Bernie has a black lives problem, so will the former Senator who bragged about his role in mass incarceration. I’d rather not see that, best to go out in the sunset while he’s on top.
This time he is an incumbent VP, so pretty much by definition a top tier candidate.
VPs are often not nationally popular or particularly astute. Was Dan Quayle “a top tier candidate”? Spiro Agnew? Cheney?
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Al Gore most certainly was a top-tier candidate.
After all, he won the (popular) election, and lost only because of the legislative coup that denied him victory.
Since in both cases these were boring, lackluster, uninspiring candidates who were either ‘working on the vision thing’ or running on inspiring ideas like ‘lockboxes’ while wearing focus group tested ‘earth tones’ to connect with the public. And they basically were able to win the popular vote because most folks viewed them as a nice continuation of popular predecessors.
I highly recommend ‘What it Takes’ by Richard Ben Cramer for a look at the 88 primary campaigns. In addition to great profiles on Biden, Gore, and Dole during earlier races that defined their personas, it really demonstrates how Bush was able to lock up the nomination as early as 1986, and that he had the money and endorsements to go the distance and survive early state stumbles. I suspect Hillary, rather than Biden, is the closer analogy in this race cycle. That said, though he would fare better than the last 73 year old sitting Vice President to throw his hat in at the last minute.
that Biden would be anything other than a boring, lackluster candidate. What does he bring that isn’t already here?
With my old co-worker who happens to be a Republican, and his theory is that Biden is there in case the Hillary scandal gets any worse, either from a legal or polling perspective. He can basically wait it out for a long time, he has the contacts to mount a late entry campaign if he wants to, and would apparently be fairly competitive in South Carolina. So if something happens that makes Hillary fatal, unlikely, but certainly more likely than we would’ve said a year ago, he can sweep in and save the party from Bernie, who some Dems are already invoking the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn to block.
If Bernie carries the first two states, and does so with double digits which some polls are saying, you may see the wagons in Washington circle around Fort Hillary. I still say she has enough money, minority support which frustrates Bernie, and a firewall of Super Tuesday states. But who knows, this cycle is just going to get less predictable as it goes on.
That sounds a lot like the strategy of LBJ VP Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
If this is the plan, I hope it works better for Mr. Biden than it did for Mr. Humphrey.
He was the last SoS to get elected to the Presidency.
…SOS was a better indicator than VP of the potential of ascending to the Presidency. I believe Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and JQA were SOS. The first Adams and Jefferson were VPs and given the system at the time Jefferson as sitting VP challenged the incumbent Adams having become VP in the first place for coming in second.
…and so far the ones I’ve seen do just that in terms of defending HRC. I’m glad to finally learn what this alleged attack was since when the Sanders campaign started talking about it I had no idea to what they were referring. Apparently they managed to break all sorts of Act Blue fundraising records off of it though. I thought the new Labour leader was somebody on the good guy list for the left so Clinton’s allies criticizing praise for him seems an odd strategy.
Brock acknowledged what he did.
Because the nesting behavior of this site is so oddly limited, I could not tell what you were talking about, because it’s not apparent what comment you replied to. What are Correct the Record emails, and what are they doing to defend Clinton? What is the attack to which you refer?
My comment was a reply to JConway’s “I was just discussing this at lunch” comment. I noticed Correct the Record was not referred to in his comment, but in the article linked therein at “spectre of Jeremy Corbyn”. According to said article Correct the Record attacked Sanders for praising Corbyn, the just elected UK Labour leader. The emails I have gotten from that outfit have been defensive, rather than offensive, literally “correcting the record” against what are in their view unfair and inaccurate attacks on Clinton.
Editors, is there any chance we could add a “parent” link on each comment similar to Daily Kos so people can see which comments are actually being replied to?
Per Christopher’s comment of 10:27 AM, I agree that some indicator of the replied-to comment is needed. Yes, everyone could do what I did in this comment, but it’s an unnecessary pain to do so.
They linked Sanders to a British politician he has never met or interacted with, and to Chavez via the New England Home Heating program Joe Kennedy II set up. By implication the Kennedy’s have to be communists too.
It also mentioned how Corbyn is pro-Palestinian, even though Bernie has been criticized by the far left for being pro-Israel and even accused of having Israeli citizenship. They are quite different even if their economics and surprise rise are similar. And very few Americans even know who Corbyn is, so it was dumb in that regard as well. But basically the old “too left to win” argument, even though he is polling substantially better than Hillary against the GOP front runner.
and authenticity than Clinton has been able to display.
I would suggest particular attention to its profile of Dukakis.
2008-Cheney chose not to run, but probably would have been top tier.
2000-Incumbent VP Gore was the Dem nominee.
1988-Incumbent VP Bush was the GOP nominee.
1984-Most recent Dem VP Mondale was the nominee.
1976-Ascended VP Ford was the GOP nominee. If Agnew didn’t have that scandal I don’t see why he might not have been top tier.
1968-Incumbent VP Humphrey AND most recent GOP VP Nixon were their parties’ respective nominees.
1964-Ascended VP Johnson was the Dem nominee
1960-Incumbent VP Nixon was the GOP nominee
Even if you leave out the ascended VPs due to incumbency advantage the record is pretty solid and I stand by my comment.
In the scoring that follows, I assign “-1” for a loss, “0” for incumbency, and “+1” for a win. I assign “0” for incumbency because it is very rare for an incumbent president to not be the party’s nominee (only in 1968 for this sample). I scored the 1968 election as a win for Richard Nixon.
1960: Lost (to JFK) — score -1
1964: Won (as incumbent) — score 0 (for incumbency)
1968: Incumbent lost, most recent GOP VP won — score +1 (for win)
1976: Lost — score -1
1984: Lost — score -1
1988: Won — score +1
2000: Lost — score -1
2008: Don’t know … I suspect Mr. Cheney would have fared worse than the eventual nominee — score -1
I get a total score of -3, and an average -0.375 per trial.
It might be a winning strategy for becoming the nominee. It looks to me as though it’s a losing strategy for choosing a winner in the general.
George HW Bush was the first sitting VP who did not first serve out the rest of his predecessor’s term to be elected since Martin Van Buren.
According to CNN, and this was a national poll rather than an early state poll.
We know for sure that Bernie may be approaching a ceiling of national support prior to the early state contests, whereas Clinton has yet to find a floor in the early states. So it really comes down to whether the national polls change significantly if Bernie were to win Iowa and/or New Hampshire.