Clinton vs. Warren, and the Winner Among Democrats Is…
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is increasingly the favorite of left-leaning Democrats, but Hillary Clinton trounces her in a head-to-head matchup for their party’s 2016 presidential nomination. One-in-five Democratic voters, however, say they’ve never heard of Warren at this early stage of the game.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that Clinton beats Warren 62% to 22% among Likely Democratic Voters asked whom they would vote for if their state’s primary was held today. But 16% are undecided given those two choices only. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
While just one percent (1%) of these voters say they’ve never heard of Clinton, Warren is an unknown to 18%.
Tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, we’ll give you a better picture of how the 2016 Democratic field looks at this early stage when we open up the ballot to some of the other prominent hopefuls.
In our last look at the Democratic race in mid-November, Clinton led a pack of potential candidates with 62% of the vote. Warren was a distant second with 17% support among her fellow Democrats.
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The survey of 648 Likely Democratic Voters was conducted on January 18-19, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Generally, with an election this far in the future, it’s mostly about name recognition, and Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, is the leader in the race to be his party’s standard-bearer in 2016. Most voters, however, think the GOP should find a fresh face to be its presidential nominee.
Among Democrats, men and those 40 and over prefer Warren more than women and younger voters do. Clinton is noticeably less popular with married Democrats compared to those who are not married.
Clinton leads, though, in every demographic group, including liberal Democrats. Warren is still an unknown commodity to many of these voters.
It’s important to remember that Clinton dominated the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination three years before the election, but when Illinois Senator Barack Obama formally entered the race in January 2007, it suddenly was a tie contest.
Only 28% of all voters think Clinton and Obama like each other, but 75% think the president is likely to endorse Clinton over other Democratic contenders if she runs for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.
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The survey of 648 Likely Democratic Voters was conducted on January 18-19, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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