Mitch Perry
It’s severely early to be handicapping the 2016 GOP presidential contest, but if pollsters are going to spend money surveying voters about who they like in the scrambled field, well, it’s going to be news.
A survey published Sunday morning from New Hampshire shows Jeb Bush taking a slight lead over other potential GOP candidates in a Bloomberg Politics/Saint Anselm New Hampshire poll, even though his party’s voters have doubts about his famous last name and his positions on immigration and education.
The departure of Mitt Romney in the race has shaken up the landscape in the Granite State; the previous Bloomberg poll in New Hampshire had Romney up by 19 points when taken last November.
The new poll shows Bush leading with just 16 percent of the vote. Kentucky Ron Paul is second with 13 percent, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is at 12 percent, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is at 10 percent.
In the next tier, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee are tied at 6 percent, Marco Rubio is at 5 percent, and Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and Donald Trump are at 3 percent.
However, the poll shows vast levels of vulnerability for Bush, with nearly three out of five Republican primary voters saying his strength as a potential candidate was based on his family connections to politics, while just 31 percent said it was due to his unique qualities and achievements. When Democrats were asked the same question about Hillary Clinton, only 21 percent cited her family connections as her main strength.
One in five Republican primary voters said Bush’s support of Common Core was a “deal-killer” that would prevent them from supporting him. His support for letting undocumented immigrants remain in the country was a deal-killer for 41 percent.
And, the poll says, the issue may make it hard for Bush to expand his support. Almost half of the Republicans who didn’t pick Bush as their first or second choice said his immigration positions were a deal-killer for them.
The poll, taken Jan. 31-Feb. 5 by Washington-based Purple Insights, surveyed 400 Republican primary voters and 400 Democratic primary voters almost exactly a year out from the 2016 New Hampshire primary. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
