April 07, 2016
How can you be a front-runner and in last place at the same time? Just ask John Kasich.
A new Quinnipiac University poll of likely Pennsylvania voters has found that Kasich is six points behind Ted Cruz and 15 points behind Donald Trump among Republicans. But he's also the only GOP candidate who beats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the general election.
"Welcome to Gov. John Kasich's world, where the big prize is tantalizingly close, but blocked by two candidates with the same goal," Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a statement.
Sanders does better than Clinton when it comes to head-to-head matchups against the Republicans. He beats Trump 48 to 40 percent and Cruz 46 to 38 percent, while Clinton beats Trump 45 to 42 percent and ties Cruz at 43 percent.
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However, Kasich beats both the Democratic candidates. He wins 51 to 35 percent against Clinton and 46 to 40 percent against Sanders.
Unfortunately for him, the general election is seven months away, and the Pennsylvania primary is in less than three weeks. And in the Pennsylvania primary, he's stuck in third place. Thirty-nine percent of Republican primary voters told pollsters they support Trump, 30 percent support Cruz, and 24 percent support Kasich.
Meanwhile, 50 percent of Democratic primary voters support Clinton and 44 percent support Sanders.
Recent surveys from other pollsters gave far different results, putting Kasich close behind Trump and Clinton way ahead of Sanders.
Taking into account all of the surveys to date, FiveThirtyEight's weighted polling average has Clinton beating Sanders 52.3 percent to 37.1 percent. The polling average on the Republican side is 39 percent Trump, 27.8 percent Cruz and 23.5 percent Kasich.
Another setback for Clinton is her favorability rating, especially with white men. Fifty-nine percent of Pennsylvania voters rate her as unfavorable, putting her just one point behind Donald Trump in unpopularity. A whopping 73 percent of white men say she's unfavorable.
In comparison, only 37 percent of voters view Sanders as unfavorable.
Quinnipiac surveyed 578 Republicans and 514 Democrats who are likely to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary. The polls were conducted in both English and Spanish over landlines and cellphones from March 30 to April 4.
The margin of error was +/- 2.4 percent for the whole sample, +/-4.1 percent for questions asked only to Republicans and +4.3 percent for questions asked only to Democrats.
View the entire Quinnipiac University poll here.
