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Marco Rubio skidded. Jeb Bush slid. Ben Carson zoomed. Mike Huckabee bounced. Scott Walker stayed steady. And that’s how you end up with a five-way tie for first place in the latest Quinnipiac University national poll on the GOP Sixteeners. Put another way: With five candidates evenly dividing half of the vote, there is no first place. While Rubio lost a third of his support and Bush continued to droop, losing three points for the second month in a row, all five can say with confidence that they will meet the polling criterion for the first GOP debate, hosted by...

And your winner is… well, nobody, really. The first national poll of GOP presidential candidates since all of the new entrants announced came out this morning and as you might have expected, primary voters are splintering off into various corners rather than solidifying behind a consensus candidate this early in the proceedings. In fact, you can’t even pick out who an early “leader” is because it’s a five way tie at ten percent each. (From Time magazine online.) The Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found the GOP field split evenly between former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former neurosurgeon Ben...

2016 Presidential Straw Poll Republicans Ron Paul - 31% Ted Cruz - 20% Scott Walker - 10% Democrats Elizabeth Warren - 10% Hillary Clinton - 7% William McRaven - 6%

"...6 Republican candidates hit double digits when it comes to who voters within their party want to be their nominee. Scott Walker leads with 18% to 15% for Marco Rubio, 13% for Mike Huckabee, 11% for Ted Cruz, and 10% each for Jeb Bush and Ben Carson. Chris Christie (6%), Rand Paul (5%), and Rick Perry (3%) round out the field. Walker has the slight overall edge on the Republican field due to his strength with voters who identify themselves as 'very conservative.' He gets 28% to 18% for Cruz, 16% for Huckabee, and 10% for Rubio. Rubio's greatest strength...

... A new survey from Public Policy Polling finds that one-third of Republicans believe the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory that “the government is trying to take over Texas,” and another 28 percent of GOP voters haven’t made up their minds yet about the matter ...

Quick: When was the last time Hillary Clinton had a "good" week? I don't remember either. The last big media stories about Clinton have been: 1.) She runs a shady foundation that burns a lot of money and doesn't do much real-world good. 2.) She had exchanges that looked like pay-for-play while acting as secretary of state. 3.) Because of these problems, she's been ducking the media like crazy. 4.) And don't forget there's that private email server that she shouldn't have been running that would have totally exonerated her about everything if she hadn't nuked it. As Jack Reacher...

If Michelle Obama decided to run for president in 2016, she would pose the most significant threat, among likely contenders, to Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the Democratic nomination, according to a new Rasmussen poll. A telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted by the polling company found that in a hypothetical match-up between the current first lady and the former secretary of State, Clinton would best Obama 56 percent to 22 percent. That may seem like a significant margin, but according to the most recent RealClearPolitics polling average, Elizabeth Warren, a popular hypothetical challenger to Clinton, receives only 12.5...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leads the field of Republican presidential hopefuls, but a pack of GOP contenders are gaining on the frontrunner in the latest survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. The poll released Wednesday found Walker in the lead for the GOP 2016 nomination with 18 percent support, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) at 13 percent, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Dr. Ben Carson at 12 percent each, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 11 percent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at 10 percent and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at 9 percent.

Many Americans like the idea of the preliminary deal that would limit Iran's nuclear program but very few people really believe Tehran will follow through with the agreement. An Associated Press-GfK poll finds that just 3 percent said they were very confident that Iran would allow inspections of its nuclear facilities, remove plutonium from the country and shut down close to half of its uranium-enriching centrifuges as the preliminary deal says would be required. Nearly seven in 10 people said they were not confident, while 25 percent said they were only moderately confident. ..... < snip > ..... Although more...

. . . but there is less here than meets the eye. At first, the numbers seem alarming, and there is an alarming element to it. Since the last time such a poll was taken in 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent. Yes, 70 percent is still an overwhelming majority, but an 8 percent drop in just seven years is pretty big. So how does one account for those one-time devoted followers of Jesus Christ suddenly abandoning the Kingdom of God? One doesn’t, because that’s not what’s really happened here....

Keep in mind that polls this early in a presidential cycle measure mostly name recognition rather than solid voter choice. Even with that caveat in mind — or perhaps because of it — the Bloomberg/St. Anselm poll released last night delivers bad news to Hillary Clinton and Democrats for 2016. Instead of a commanding lead over a field of emerging names, Hillary barely edges out most of the GOP field: There’s no clear Republican front-runner in the New Hampshire presidential nominating contest, while Hillary Clinton retains an overwhelming advantage among Democrats in the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary.Clinton’s advantage over...

(POLL DETAILS AT LINK)

<p>How long will it take for Democrats to realize that Hillary Clinton is terrible candidate who will lead them to disaster in 2016? That is the key question that most of them are unable to face as the former first lady and disastrous secretary of state rides momentum (and her potential opponents’ fear of her retribution) toward the nomination. Once she is nominated in late July, 2016, they will be stuck with her, an act of God being the only out. So they have a year to think it over.</p>

As a true bellwether state, New Hampshire arguably deserves its status as the first in the nation primary state. In the last 36 years, only in 2004 have New Hampshire’s general election voters failed to back the ultimate presidential election winner. What’s more, the margin of victory enjoyed by the winner of the Granite State’s electoral votes often closely mirrors the national vote. New Hampshire’s voters truly have their finger on the political pulse. And that’s why the results of the latest Dartmouth University survey should be a source of concern for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Dartmouth pollsters took an...

Rasmussen Reports finds that when you survey Likely U.S. Voters: -- 63% think it’s likely some actions Clinton took as secretary of State were influenced by donations made to the Clinton Foundation, including 42% who say it’s Very Likely. -- 51% do not trust Clinton. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say they do trust the former first lady, but another 13% are undecided. -- 52% now believe Clinton’s use of a private, non-government e-mail provider for issues at the highest levels of the U.S. government raises serious national security concerns, up slightly from 49% in early March. -- 45% now say Clinton...

President Barack Obama isn’t exactly riding high on public support, but for the first time in two years more Americans approve of the job he is doing than disapprove. The news comes courtesy of a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that was released Monday. It found that 48 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing as president, while 47 percent disapprove. Obama is only one point into positive territory and hasn’t hit 50 percent since February 2013, but it’s the highest number the president has seen in this survey since June 2013. It’s also marked improvement over...

Just because you’re not interested in politics doesn’t mean politics isn’t interested in you. Americans seem to have forgotten this dictum. A brand-new poll, taken in the form of an online survey, was just issued by the Pew Research Center. It paints a melancholy picture about the abysmal state of knowledge the U.S. public possesses on public affairs – the more so when you reflect that self-selection was probably present. In other words, you probably are brighter than Joe Sixpack if you could be bothered to take the test in the first place. Most people knew who Martin Luther King...

Americans are bracing for a summer of racial disturbances around the country, such as those that have wracked Baltimore, with African Americans and whites deeply divided about why the urban violence has occurred, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found. A resounding 96% of adults surveyed said it was likely there would be additional racial disturbances this summer, a signal that Americans believe Baltimore’s recent problems aren’t a local phenomenon but instead are symptomatic of broader national problems. When asked to explain recent events in Baltimore and other cities that have seen confrontations between police and members of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans appear to be suspicious of Hillary Rodham Clinton's honesty, and even many Democrats are only lukewarm about her presidential candidacy, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Is she strong and decisive? Yes, say a majority of people. But inspiring and likable? Only a minority think so.

a new poll shows that Republican voters who rally to that cry still want to maintain many federal programs. The results, from an online poll of 4,770 adults from April 10 to 24, highlight a dilemma for Republican candidates such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who have made reducing the size of government a top campaign theme.