Harper Polling is out with a new primary poll for Pennsylvania conducted April 2-3, 2016. Pennsylvania has a closed primary, and the poll included 603 likely democratic voters (MOE, +/-4). The poll has good news for Hillary on several fronts.
TOPLINE RESULTS
Hillary leads Sanders, 55% to 33% (12% undecided).
Given that Sanders needs to win Pennsylvania by a large margin to win around 57% of delegates, any polls showing him trailing are a concern for his campaign.
Poll shows Clinton has a better favorable/unfavorable rating than Sanders:
Clinton: 75%/24%
Sanders: 71%/27%
More importantly for Clinton, 47% of voters have a very favorable view of Clinton compared with 33% of voters who feel the same about Sanders.
Clinton led among moderates and somewhat liberals, whereas Sanders led among very liberal voters. Clinton also led among women (60%-27%) and men (49%-40%).
Her strong favorability among Pennsylvania women may make Sanders regret his comments today attacking her as “unqualified.” Also, does anyone else find it odd that she leads among men despite having a less favorable rating from men?
|
White |
AA |
Other |
WOMEN |
MEN |
Clinton |
|
|
|
|
|
Very favorable |
42% |
67% |
50% |
53% |
34% |
Somewhat favorable |
29% |
26% |
23% |
28% |
29% |
Somewhat
unfavorable
|
13% |
6% |
10% |
10% |
12% |
Very unfavorable |
16% |
0 |
17% |
8% |
18% |
SANDERS |
|
|
|
|
|
Very FAVORABLE |
33% |
25% |
53% |
31% |
35% |
SOMEWHAT FAVORABLE |
38% |
44% |
20% |
38% |
38% |
SOMEWHAT
UNFAVORABLE
|
18% |
20% |
23% |
19% |
18% |
VERY UNFAVORABLE |
11% |
3% |
3% |
9% |
8% |
Endorsed Candidate vs Political Outsider
The poll also asked about Pennsylvania senate candidates. One interesting question that has a silver lining for Clinton is that the plurality of Pennsylvania democrats surveyed said they would prefer a candidate for Senate “who is endorsed by the Democratic party in Washington” (39%) instead of “a candidate who is a political outsider.” (28%) Women especially wanted a candidate endorsed by the party (47%/19%). Women undecided about their senate choices who wanted an establishment senate candidate broke for Clinton (
Crosstabs here: harperpolling.com/...
It’s late, and I didn’t have time to do a thorough analysis, so you may find something interesting in the crosstabs. A couple of caveats about the poll are that it included only landlines and has only a C+ rating from 538.
UPDATE:
Harper Polling is apparently a Republican polling firm that is hired to do work for democrats and republicans. This was an unsponsored poll.