Rick Santorum may be running for President again, but he doesn’t even lead the GOP field in his own home state. Scott Walker leads among Pennsylvania Republicans with 17% to 12% each for Ben Carson, Chris Christie, and Rick Santorum, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 9% each for Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, and 6% each for Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.
Pennsylvania provides a good prism into how Walker and Bush have traveled in different directions in the polling this year. When we polled the state in January Bush was 9 points ahead of Walker, 18% to 9%. Now Walker’s support is up 8 points and Bush’s is down by 9, almost flipping the results from earlier in the year and putting Walker 8 points ahead of Bush at 17/9.
Also seeing their support drop a lot from where we had them earlier in the year are Ben Carson (from 18% to 12%) and Ted Cruz (from 10% to 6%). Neither of them has been able to sustain the momentum they briefly had following their candidacy announcements. Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul are all pretty much where they were in January.
Continuing the recent trend in our polling Marco Rubio is actually the most popular of the Republican candidates, with a 59/11 favorability rating. Pennsylvania is the first state in a long time where we’ve found Chris Christie with a positive rating among Republicans, at 43/39. Still he’s dropped a long way from this time last year when he was leading the GOP field in the state at 24%.
On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton continues to be dominant at 63% to 14% for Bernie Sanders, 6% for Martin O’Malley, and 3% each for Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb. Clinton’s actually polling even higher than in January when we found her at 58%, although Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren were being included in the candidate mix at that time. Clinton is polling over 60% with liberals, moderates, women, African Americans, and young voters and over 50% with men, whites, and seniors. There continue to be no real weaknesses in her standing with Democratic voters.
Clinton leads all the Republicans in general election match ups in the state, but there’s a wide range in the size of her advantages from as little as 1 point all the way up to 11 points. The strongest GOPer for the general election is Marco Rubio, who trails only 46/45. Rubio pulls off the rare feat of having a positive favorability rating with voters overall at 36/33. On the complete other side of the spectrum is Jeb Bush. He has a 24/53 favorability in the state, even worse than Chris Christie’s. And he fares the poorest of the Republicans against Clinton, trailing by 11 at 49/38.
In between the Rubio and Bush extremes, Rand Paul comes the closest to Clinton with a 3 point deficit at 46/43. Scott Walker trails by 4 at 45/41. Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee are each down by 5 at 46/41 and 47/42 respectively. Ben Carson lags by 6 at 48/42, Rick Santorum is down 7 points in his home state at 49/42, and Ted Cruz has an 8 point deficit at 49/41.
For the most part Clinton’s performance is comparable to or better than Obama did in 2012, with the exception of the Rubio and Paul match ups. All of the non-Clinton Democrats trail in Pennsylvania- in match ups against Scott Walker, Bernie Sanders is down 5 at 37/32, Jim Webb has a 7 point deficit at 36/29, Martin O’Malley trails by 8 at 38/30, and Lincoln Chafee does the worst with a 9 point lag at 36/27. The quartet, mostly due to their low name recognition, get only 45-52% of the Democratic vote when matched against Walker.
Full results here
