With frontrunner Hillary Clinton struggling through a scandal related to her use of a private email server during her years as secretary of state, Vice President Joe Biden is, more and more, being called on to throw his hat into the ring and seek the Democratic presidential nomination.
On Monday, according to NBC News, former Obama Florida strategist Steve Schale signed on to a growing effort to draft Biden to run for president. On the same day, a new Quinnipiac poll of key swing states found that, should the vice president run, he might do very well indeed, at least against current front-runners.
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Biden tops the GOP’s current polling leader Donald Trump 45-42 in Florida, 48-38 in Ohio, and 48-40 in Pennsylvania, according to Quinnipiac. Clinton, by contrast, loses to Trump in Florida, though she maintains an advantage over the billionaire real estate tycoon in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In other bad news for Clinton, she loses head-to-head matchups with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida governor Jeb Bush in all three of the swing states polled.
“Vice President Joseph Biden, who is spending his time in seclusion, contemplating whether to take on Secretary Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries for president, has some new information to consider,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “In head-to-head matchups against the three leading contenders for the Republican nomination, he runs as well or slightly better than she does.”
Biden’s intentions are not at all clear at this point, and neither is how well his polling would hold up if his candidacy changed from a thought experiment to reality. Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner since about 2008, has locked up much of the talent and a lot of the money available to the Democratic field. Her current opponents, primarily former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have limited name recognition and even more limited support, though Sanders has shown that he can challenge Clinton in New Hampshire.
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A Biden run would face substantial hurdles in terms of creating the campaign infrastructure that Clinton has been building, or having built on her behalf, for years. However, with public opinion toward Clinton apparently souring, worried Democrats seem increasingly hopeful that they can find an alternative.
“Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers are like a leaky faucet: drip ... drip ... drip. She is now getting less than half the vote in all three states’ Democratic primaries,” Brown said.
The former secretary of state has substantial net unfavorable ratings in all three of the states polled by Quinnipiac.
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She is also viewed as untrustworthy by large majorities of voters in all three states. Asked if Clinton is “honest and trustworthy” 64 percent of Florida voters, 60 percent of Ohio voters, and 63 percent of Pennsylvania votes said that she is not.
It’s early in the campaign and polling numbers can change, as Trump has shown by rocketing to the top of the GOP slate. But the latest findings certainly aren’t good news for Clinton, and they give the members of the draft Biden movement one more piece of ammunition.
