The FINANCIAL — Voters still think President Obama and Hillary Clinton agree on most things, but they’re not as confident as they were a year ago that the president’s going to endorse Clinton to be the next Democratic presidential nominee.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters think Clinton and Obama hold similar views on most major policy issues. That’s up from 52% a year ago when we first asked this question. Nineteen percent (19%) say they don’t agree on most issues, while 23% are not sure.
Sixty-eight percent (68%) still think the president is likely to endorse Clinton over other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, but only 29% say it’s Very Likely. Last September, 75% considered an Obama endorsement of Clinton as likely, with 40% who said it was Very Likely.
Among Likely Democratic Voters only, 74% still believe an Obama endorsement of Clinton is likely, unchanged from last September. But while 49% viewed it as Very Likely a year ago, just 33% feel that way now.
Rasmussen Reports’ latest look at the Democratic presidential race finds that the 2016 nomination remains Clinton’s to lose. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has surged significantly, but Clinton still leads him by a two-to-one margin.
One-in-four Democrats (24%) – and 46% of all voters – think Clinton should suspend her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination until all of the legal questions about her use of a private e-mail server as secretary of State are resolved.
Voters under 40 don’t believe as strongly as their elders that the president and Clinton see eye-to-eye on most major policy issues. White voters think they have more in common than black and other minority voters do.
But black voters feel an Obama endorsement is more likely than the others do, although just 34% of blacks say it’s Very Likely.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republicans and 56% of voters not affiliated with either major party think Obama and Clinton agree on most major issues, but just 50% of Democrats share that view.
Conservative voters are more likely to think the two agree than moderates and liberals are.
Even among voters who think Clinton and Obama hold similar views on most major policy issues, just 34% believe the president is Very Likely to endorse his former secretary of State over the other Democratic presidential hopefuls.
Rasmussen Reports found last September that just 28% of all voters believed Obama and Clinton like each other. Even among Democrats, only 43% felt that was true.
Fifty-four percent (54%) of Democrats think a comparison to Obama is a positive one for a candidate, while 18% consider it a negative comparison instead.
However, only 23% of all voters think Obama’s record in office will help the next Democratic presidential candidate.
Before the midterm elections last November, 27% said it would help political candidates in their state if the president came to campaign for them, while 39% said a presidential visit would hurt the candidates instead.
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