Rasmussen latest poll asks voters "Should Hillary Clinton suspend her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination until all of the legal questions about her use of a private e-mail server during her time as secretary of State are resolved?" in a national survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted August 23-24, 2015.
A whopping 46% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Clinton should suspend her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination until all of the legal questions about her use of the private e-mail server are resolved. 44% disagree, and 9% are unsure.
24% of Democrats believe Hillary should suspend her campaign.
46% of Independents believe Hillary should suspend her campaign.
Forty-five percent (45%) of all voters - but only 18% of Democrats - now consider the national security questions raised about Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of State to be a serious scandal. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of likely voters consider the matter an embarrassing situation, while nearly as many (23%) say it’s no big deal.
FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings ranks Rasmussen as C grade, with a R +2.3 bias.
Here is Nate defending Rasmussen:
According to Silver, Rasmussen’s “lean” towards Republicans is a defensible sign of polling methodology, and their election polling “has tended to be quite accurate in the past.” Some of the concerns raised by Rasmussen’s liberal critics in the Politico article — for instance, that Rasmussen polls tend to assume smaller numbers of young and minority voters than other polls based on their “likely voter” model — could ring hollow if Rasmussen’s older, less diverse snapshot of the electorate turns out to be accurate in the 2010 midterm elections.
With Joe Biden re-affirming that Hillary Clinton isn't credible on income inequality, Bernie Sanders is quickly becoming the Democratic Party's most viable front-runner.
Here are 3 reasons Bernie Sanders is now the Democratic front-runner.
(my emphasis)
1. Within a surprisingly short time period, increased name recognition and an energized base of Democratic voters have allowed Sanders to compete and even surpass Clinton in various polls.
This Quinnipiac poll explains that Sanders now performs as well, or even better than Clinton, in various scenarios:
In several matchups in Iowa and Colorado, another Democratic contender, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, runs as well as, or better than Clinton against Rubio, Bush and Walker. ...
Clinton gets markedly negative favorability ratings in each state, 35-56 percent in Colorado, 33-56 percent in Iowa and 41-50 percent in Virginia.
'Hillary Clinton's numbers have dropped among voters in the key swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. She has lost ground in the horserace and on key questions about her honesty and leadership,' said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
In addition to Quinnipiac's research, The Hill's Brent Budowsky, in his Contributors piece titled "Sanders beats trump by 20 plus points," explains that Sanders is just as competitive as Clinton against GOP competition:
The fact that Sanders beats Walker by six to seven points, depending on whether all voters or likely voters are counted — a near-landslide margin in a general election — makes it clear that the Sanders surge is more than a surge against Donald Trump, but move that makes him competitive with all Republican candidates.
2. Clinton can't win the Democratic nomination or presidency with the FBI as a running mate.
3. Classified information has already been found within Clinton's emails and there's a great likelihood of more revelations pertaining to breaches in protocol. As a result, the servers and emails (of other people) linked to Clinton's correspondence can also become part of this ongoing saga.
This fact, along with the millions of Sanders voters around the country filling arenas to hear the senator speak, are reasons why Sanders is the true Democratic front-runner. Over 100,000 people have attended his events thus far, and it's safe to say that such enthusiasm and energy will continue to grow until Election Day. Democrats in Congress might not admit it at the moment, and Clinton supporters might still believe the email controversy is fabricated, but only one Democrat in 2016 can win the presidency. His name is Bernie Sanders, and the longer Hillary Clinton's email scandal persists, the more Sanders becomes the only hope Democrats have of winning the White House.