Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post has a column this morning titled Hillary Clinton is the only candidate who a majority of Americans say is ‘qualified’ to be president. The title comes from the fact that the massive (2000 respondents) Economist/YouGov poll taken April 8-11 show that 56% of the poll’s respondents consider Clinton qualified to be President, compared to 48% for Sanders, and even lower numbers for Republicans: Cruz and Kasich 39%, Trump 33%.
By contrast, on whom people consider trustworthy, only Sanders, at 51%, gets that approval by a majority of Americans, compared with Clint at Kasich at 34%, Clinton and Cruz at 30%, and Trump at 27%.
Rampell provides this link to the complete survey, which has some 160+ pages of detailed cross-tabs, not all about the Presidential contenders.
A couple of other items I noted while leafing through the survey:
Preference for Dem candidates, Clinton first, then Sanders:
all voters 30-42
Democrats 53-37
Independents 21-48
(remember that many of those independents are Republican leaning)
Like or dislike of preferred Dem candidate versus other Dem Candidate among Dem primary voters
Clinton 96-4
Sanders 83-17
Level of support with first column being strongly and the second some level, among supporters of each candidate
Clinton 67 30
Sanders 64 28
Trump 6 37
Cruz 8 32
NOTE — this seems to indicate that Clinton supporters are slightly more strongly supportive of her than Sanders are of him, although that difference is insignificant, particularly as compared to the levels of support for the two leading Republicans.
So let’s look at enthusiasm, among Democrats, for the two candidates.
4 columns are Enthusiastic, not enthusiastic but supportive, dissat, upset, not sure
Clinton 47-32-10-11-1
Sanders 37-37-14-10-6
In other words, this data does NOT support the notion of an enthusiasm gap favoring Sanders, but rather one mildly favoring Clinton, AMONG DEMOCRATS. Which is important given that New York on Tuesday is a closed primary, as are CT, MD, DE, and PA the following week, and four more going down the stretch (one of which is OR where Sanders should nevertheless win).
Tons more data in the document. Take a look. See what impresses you. I note that barely half of the supporters of either Cruz or Trump think their candidate can win the general, and less than half of Kasich’s.
Make of it what you will.