21 July, 2017
Hillary Clinton is less popular than her former rival, the now President Donald Trump, a new poll showed Tuesday.
That's the big takeaway from a new Pew Research Center survey, which is just the latest indicator of our remarkably tribal and partisan politics.
But more than half of voters say Trump will not be a factor in their vote for Congress.
The poll shows nearly half of liberal Democrats - 47 percent - say that if a friend supported Trump, it would actually put a strain on their friendship.
By a wide margin, voters say they want Democrats to control Congress in 2018, according to a new ABC News/Washington Postpoll published Wednesday.
Democrats were more likely than Republicans to skip the 2014 congressional elections, and the poll finds that among those who sat out 2014 and now say they are certain to vote in 2018, Democrats have a major advantage.
Part or the reason for the imbalance is likely that liberals tend to live in more homogeneous places and don't even associate with conservatives. The rest split closely between saying they'd vote to support Trump (20 percent) or to oppose him (24 percent), a non-significant gap.
Meanwhile, only 13 percent of Republicans say that if a friend supported Hillary Clinton, it would strain their relationship.
The prevalent belief on the left that Trump isn't just a bad president or person, but is also racist, xenophobic and misogynistic is undoubtedly at play here too. By 64 percent to 30 percent, more prefer Democrats as a check against Trump than Republicans who will support Trump's agenda.
The poll also showed that if voters had the chance, they would rather have former President Barack Obama, 53 percent to 40 percent, or former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, 49 percent to 42 percent, now in the White House than President Trump. Although some Democratic voters (in particular, white working-class voters in Rust Belt states) probably did swing to the Republicans, the bigger problem was the large number of what I call "Obama-Johnstein" voters - people who supported Mr. Obama in 2012 but then voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, previous year (according to the exit polls, 43 percent of them were nonwhite).
