Businessman Donald Trump’s lead in national polling is larger than Hillary Clinton’s lead over Socialist Bernie Sanders. Trump’s lead is larger than Ronald Reagan’s lead in 1980 and George W. Bush’s lead in 1988.
Ethan Epstein at The Weekly Standard reported:
So dominant is Hillary Clinton’s polling in the presidential primaries, notes the press critic Howard Kurtz, that the media have essentially stopped paying attention to the Democratic race at all. The logic, for a media organization, is simple: Why lavish limited resources on a fait accompli? The Democrats, after all, have spoken. They are fully ready for (or perhaps fully resigned to) Hillary.
That’s certainly not the case on the Republican side, where, we are told (ad nauseam), that the race is still “wide open.” With “no clear frontrunner” on the GOP side, the contrast between the Republican and Democratic contests could not be clearer. It will be Hillary representing the Dems, and it could be just about anybody (well, maybe not anybody) who ends up leading the ticket for the GOP.
Yet are the races really all that different?
According to the two latest national polls, conducted as the furor over Trump’s call for a temporary moratorium on Muslim migration reached a fever pitch, the real estate magnate leads the Republican field by either 23 or 27 points. Tuesday’s Washington Post/ABC News poll has Trump with more than double the support of the second place finisher, Ted Cruz. Indeed, Trump’s lead over his primary opponents, this late in the game, is larger than both Ronald Reagan’s was in 1980, and George H. W Bush’s was in 1988.
The latest national polls of the Democrats, meanwhile, show Secretary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by a mere 20 or 19 points. And her support appears to be plateauing, while Trump’s numbers are surging. All of which is to say, on a national level, Trump is clearly in a stronger position than Clinton is.
