Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump still leads the GOP field in the three key swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but narrowly loses to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in head-to-head matchups.
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Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state has been the subject of a federal investigation – and a favorite attack point for Republicans – since the issue came to light in March. Carson, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina are up; Bush and Huckabee are down.
Trump saw similar success in Pennsylvania, where he led the GOP field with 23 percent of the vote.
No other GOP candidate finished in double digits.
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, had a positive 52 percent/35 percent favorable/unfavorable split, with voters saying he is honest and trustworthy by a 64 percent to 27 percent margin.
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The two top candidates are upside down in Florida. And only 12 percent of Florida Republicans would back their own former governor, Jeb Bush, for president.
Instead, Republicans can see themselves supporting a Carson presidency. Bush places second in that category, with a 48 percent unfavorable rating. Bush is viewed favorably by 47 percent and unfavorably by 29 percent. The poll showed that 43% of voters from Florida intend on choosing her to be their presidential nominee and only 19% said that they will support Senator Bernie Sanders. Few Republican primary voters are very confident in the ability of any of the three to handle an global crisis. Trump does the worst here with 60 percent thinking he doesn’t care about average Americans’ problems while 35 percent say he does. “Vote for me, ‘” Clinton said.
It’s been a tougher road for those who could be considered “establishment” candidates.
As for what the right kind of experience is, most Republican primary voters think it’s more important for the next President to have experience in the private sector (55 percent) than in politics or government (10 percent), though 34 percent say it doesn’t matter.
On Wednesday, the real estate mogul jumped to the defense of Ben Carson who said he would have attempted to foil the gunman’s efforts in the Oregon college shooting.
But both parties’ frontrunners also have the highest negatives among voters as a whole. Clinton won in Pennsylvania too, 44 percent to 42 percent.
The poll surveyed voters from September 25 to October 5 on land lines and cell phones.
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In Florida, the poll includes interviews with 1,173 registered voters, including 461 Republicans and 411 Democrats.
