Headline of the Day: Poor Hillary
This poll does NOT do much for her either but 15 points before the November election may change considerably after.
If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were to challenge President Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2012, she would currently have the support of 37% of Democrats nationally, while 52% would support Obama.
Presidents with relatively low job approval ratings heading into a possible re-election bid are vulnerable to intra-party challenges. As two examples, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were challenged for their respective parties’ nomination as sitting presidents — Ford by Ronald Reagan, and Carter by Edward Kennedy and Jerry Brown. Ford’s job approval rating had reached as low as 37% in 1975, the year before he ran for re-election, and Carter’s had reached 28% in 1979. Obama’s current weekly job approval rating is 44%, albeit with more than two years until the next presidential election.