Hillary Clinton’s advantage over the 2016 Republican filed has dropped seven to ten points since February. This only adds to the growing narrative that she’s eminently beatable, and a highly polarizing figure whose popularity wanes the longer she sits in the spotlight. Yet, so far, the three strongest candidates against Hillary are Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rand Paul, and Gov. Scott Walker [emphasis mine]:
PPP's newest national Presidential poll finds Hillary Clinton leading the field of potential Republican candidates by anywhere from 3-9 points. Her advantage is down from being ahead by 7-10 points against the various potential GOP contenders on our February poll.Even with her advantage over the Republican field on the decline, Clinton is still clearly a stronger candidate than anyone else the Democrats might put forward at this point. Clinton leads Scott Walker, who currently leads in our national GOP polling, 46/42. By comparison Joe Biden (46/40) and Elizabeth Warren (43/39) would both trail Walker in hypothetical match ups.
In addition to Walker, 2 other GOP hopefuls come within 4 points of Clinton. Marco Rubio trails her just 46/43, and Rand Paul's deficit is 46/42. Paul's numbers are interesting. He actually does better than anyone else on his side with independents, leading Clinton by 14 points at 47/33. But the 77% of the Republican vote he gets against Clinton is the lowest of any candidate other than Chris Christie.
The sample of the PPP poll was somewhat reflective of the 2012 electorate. The sample size was just shy of 1,000 registered voters (989), including 449 Democratic primary voters. While this was a D+8 poll, the ideological breakdown skewed towards the right, with 41 percent of respondents describing themselves as conservative, 33 percent saying they were liberal, and 26 identifying as moderate. Fifty-three percent of those polled were women, 47 percent were men. On racial lines, 9 percent were Hispanic, 74 percent were white, 12 percent were African-American, and 6 percent being other ethnicities.
Marco Rubio plans to make his 2016 intentions known on April 13. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Paul (R-KY) have already announced their candidacies.
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