IT COULD BE WORSE THAN IMAGINED …
Presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is currently enjoying a six-point lead over presumed “Republican” nominee Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race – according to the latest aggregate polling data from RealClearPolitics.
Will her lead hold, though? And are the national polls properly accounting for America’s utterly upheaved electoral landscape?
We’ll know soon enough …
One national poll that interested us tremendously, though, was a new survey from Bloomberg Politics. The poll – released earlier this month – delves into the populist insurgency on Clinton’s left flank. Specifically, it seeks to divine the intentions of those voters supporting the candidacy of independent socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
According to the survey, 55 percent of Sanders supporters said they planned to vote for Clinton in November. Twenty-two percent said they supported Trump, while 18 percent said they favored libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.
“Clinton’s paltry support among Sanders voters could still grow … but the Bloomberg poll found that only 5 percent of Sanders supporters who don’t currently back Clinton would consider doing so in the future,” reporters Joshua Green and Sahil Kupar noted.
Green and Kupar also got a ball-busting quote from a 31-year-old non-profit worker in Baltimore, Maryland who supports Sanders.
There’s zero percent chance that Hillary Clinton could ever get my vote. She’s a corporate candidate. I don’t vote for corporate candidates. I don’t do the lesser of two evils.
With Trump hammering away at “Crooked Hillary” from the right and so many progressives adamantly opposed to her from the left, it’s easy to see the challenge she faces moving forward.
Sure, Clinton will continue to benefit from the full-throated support of the corporatist media – but it’s clear they don’t hold the power they once did.
Clinton’s crumbling left flank also creates an interesting dynamic for her strategists: Do they accept the attrition? Or do they chart a course further to the left that could erode her base of centrist support?
This will be very interesting to watch …