The other day I posted my thoughts on whether Hillary Clinton should stay in the presidential race or quit. The post was prompted by media calls for Clinton to quit. In the comments section, a couple of readers feelingly expressed the view that many Obama supporters would refuse to vote for Clinton if she were the nominee, to the point of not just sitting out but actually voting for McCain over Clinton.
That certainly accords with the conventional wisdom, that Obama is more acceptable to Clinton supporters than Clinton is to Obama supporters. But a Pew poll addresses this question, and produces surprising answers:
— More Democratic voters defect to McCain if Obama is the nominee than if Clinton is the nominee: “in an Obama-McCain matchup, 14% of Democratic voters say they would support McCain, compared with 8% who would do so if Clinton is the nominee”.
— More Clinton supporters would switch to McCain if Obama is the nominee than Obama supporters would if Clinton is the nominee: “A quarter of Democrats (25%) who back Clinton for the nomination say they would favor McCain in a general election test against Obama. The “defection” rate among Obama’s supporters if Clinton wins the nomination is far lower; just 10% say they would vote for McCain in November…”
And then, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll has some numbers on the subject of whether Clinton should quit the race that I found really surprising too:
… Democrats by a very wide 67-29 percent say Clinton should stay in the race even if she loses either Texas or Ohio.
That’s a lot more lopsided than I would ever have guessed. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see only about 60% of Democrats saying that she should stay in even if she won both Texas and Ohio.
But here’s the one that really blew me away:
But if she were to lose both, far fewer say they’d want her to continue – 45 percent, with 51 percent saying otherwise.
Trust ABC News not to see that the important thing about that response is not that 45% is far fewer than 67%, but that almost 50% of Democrats would like her to battle on even if she loses both Texas and Ohio. I would submit that’s mindboggling.
And there’s also this:
… nearly half of Obama’s supporters say that a Clinton loss in either Ohio or Texas should not be enough to force her out of the race
Once again, Obama supporters displaying surprising support for Clinton.
Very interesting, all of this!