Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Super Tuesday favorability ratings

Here are the favorability-unfavorability ratings for primary candidates on Super Tuesday morning, averaged from recent polls by Huffington Post:
Donald Trump: 36.5 F   58.2 U
Marco Rubio: 35.9 F  40.9 U
Hillary Clinton: 40.4 F   54.0 U
Bernie Sanders: 50.8 F   38.0 U

Bernie's numbers definitely won't be that good after a general election campaign full of attacks. But +12.8 when everyone else is net negative, and the most likely candidates are double-digit negative, is pretty astonishing. If I thought America would flee in terror from a self-described socialist, these numbers would make me rethink things. There's plenty of viable space to the left of traditional Democratic positions.