WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) — Democrats are more optimistic than Republicans that there is a candidate running for the White House who would make a good president, according to a recent poll.
On the question of whether there is any candidate running who would make a good U.S. president, 71 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans surveyed by Gallup responded “yes.”
“The latest reading is the first since Hillary Clinton effectively clinched the Democratic nomination. Donald Trump became the inevitable GOP nominee a month earlier,” Gallup wrote in a statement.
“The narrowing of each party’s field seems to have done more harm to Republicans’ views of the field than to Democrats’.”
Although confidence in either party decreased from similar Gallup polls conducted this year, the decrease was larger on the Republican side. The poll was conducted through telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,021 adults. It has a margin of error of 4 percent.
Confidence for Democrats was highest in March when 78 percent of those surveyed believed there was a good candidate running — when Bernie Sanders‘ campaign was still competitive.
About 70 percent of Republicans believed there was good candidate running in February — when Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ted Cruz were still contesting Trump.
Republicans who believe candidates are talking about issues they care about reached a high of 71 percent in June, compared to 61 percent of Democrats who said the same.
“While Republicans as a whole are more likely than Democrats to be satisfied with the discussion of issues they care about, there is a major breach between pro- and anti-Trump Republicans on this question,” Gallup writes.
“Much higher proportions of Trump’s Republican admirers than Republican detractors are satisfied with the issues the candidates are talking about.”
