Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

The latest Quinnipiac University national poll has some interesting numbers.

American voters back Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Republican candidates by margins of 4 to 10 percentage points in head to head presidential matchups, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today. The closest Republican contender is Ohio Gov. John Kasich who trails Sanders 45 - 41 percent.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trails or ties leading Republicans in the November face-off, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds.

If former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg jumps into the race as a third party candidate against Sanders and Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Bloomberg would hurt Sanders more than either Republican.

Sanders has the highest favorability rating of any candidate and the highest scores for honesty and integrity, for caring about voters' needs and problems and for sharing voters' values. He ties Clinton and Trump on having strong leadership qualities and falls behind Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on having the right kind of experience to be president.

"It's certainly Sen. Bernie Sanders' moment. The Vermont firebrand leads all potential GOP rivals in raw numbers and raw emotion with the best scores for favorability and several key character traits," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"The candidate running best against Sanders is Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and he's in fourth place with 6 percent in the Republican presidential pack, unlikely to make it to the main event.

"Sanders has a lackluster 51 percent favorability rating, but that's better than all the rest. Most of the top candidates have negative scores." 

Clinton would edge out both Trump and Bush in a virtual tie and lose to Cruz, Rubio and lose big to Kasich.  Sanders would win against all of them.  Bloomberg however would make the country a tossup between Sanders and Trump, oy vey.

Observations from the crosstabs:

1) Clinton versus Trump?  Clinton indeed wins women overall by 11 points, but Trump wins white women by 9 points.  That's the closest she gets on white women overall. She'd lose white women to Kasich by 20 points.  Where Clinton does well is an overwhelming advantage with Hispanic and especially Black women, but that's not enough to counter her massive disadvantage among white men, ranging from 24 to 33 points.

2) Sanders on the other hand wins white women by 3 points against Trump and Cruz and 2 against Bush, and still gets 77-83% of the black vote.  In other words, Sanders does better with white voters right now, and just as well with black and Hispanic voters in head to head matchups versus the GOP.

3) In other words, black and Hispanic voters will pull for the Ds no matter which candidate they get.  It's white voters who are the issue, and they're actually more comfortable with Sanders.

4) The Sanders camp therefore feels pretty confident that it can retain the Obama coalition among voters of color and increase the number of white voters and win.

5) I don't like where that's going, because that's a prime recipe for taking voters of color, especially black voters, for granted, and slagging us in order to get more white voters.  That may have been the Sanders plan all along, but this is kind of crosstab evidence that supports why the Sanders team seems to be focused exclusively on white voters and ignoring the rest of the Obama coalition, because what are we going to do, vote for Trump?

I'm not sure how reproducible this poll is on a national level, and I would need to see a lot more data saying Sanders is the more electable Democrat, because that flies in the face of everything we've seen so far.

Then again, if Sanders keeps up with stuff like this, he's going to lose anyway.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday that rapper Killer Mike's recent comments that a "uterus doesn't qualify you to be president of the United States" have been "blown out of proportion" by the media covering his race against Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic presidential candidate told reporters traveling with him to Nevada that the rapper was essentially saying that "people should not be voting for candidates based on their gender but what they believe. I think that makes sense."

"No one has ever heard me say, 'Hey guys, let's stand together, vote for a man.' I would never do that, never have," Sanders said. "I think in a presidential race, we look at what a candidate stands for and we vote for the candidate we think can best serve our country."

Ugh.  Seriously, man?  Can we not mansplain the mansplaining?