Under the headline, ‘Sanders Surges, Clinton Sags,’ Gallup on Friday released new survey data showing that the two-leading Democratic nominees are currently heading in opposite directions when it comes to favorability ratings among likely U.S. voters with the grassroots populism of the Sanders’ campaign outshining the strong name recognition and more centrist policies of Clinton.
According to the latest polling, Sanders’ favorability rating has doubled since March (from 12% to 24%), while people’s positive perception of Clinton has fallen five percentage points since the questions were asked about her candidacy in April.
While Sander’s unfavorability rating has also risen slightly, Clinton experienced her worst performance yet on that score since 2007, with 47% of respondents who were able to make a judgement saying they think of her negatively. Overall, Clinton’s negativity rating of 46% percent is now higher than her favorability rating of 43%.
Trends aside, overall favorability rating for Clinton is twice that of Sanders. However, Gallup notes that as name recognition for Sanders has grown nationwide, people are gravitating towards his message of combatting economic inequality, climate change, and the outsized influence of money in politics. “Sanders is still an unknown to a majority of Americans,” notes Gallup, “with just 44% able to rate him compared with Clinton’s 89%.”
The bottom line, said Gallup‘s Lydia Saad, is that even as Clinton’s “national image has taken a slight turn for the worse, which is also evident in her image among Democrats,” she continues to be the “only Democratic candidate for president with a national name” and is standing “head and shoulders above her next closest competitor—Sanders—in popularity for the presidential nomination.”
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