Most Democrats said they’re satisfied with their options ahead of the 2020 presidential election, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey found. About two-thirds of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said they’re satisfied with or enthusiastic about the candidates vying for the nomination, with just 16 percent upset or dissatisfied.
That’s a modestly more upbeat starting point than the last time around. In May 2015, 59 percent of Democratic voters surveyed said they were at least satisfied with their primary candidates, while 66 percent of Republican voters said the same.
More than a dozen Democrats have announced their candidacy for president or formed an exploratory committee, exposing substantive divides within the party on everything from ideology to the best approach for taking on President Donald Trump. Those divisions are mirrored in Congress, as the new Democratic majority in the House negotiates intraparty tensions and debates the desirability of bipartisan outreach.
But Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said, 46 percent to 31 percent, that they see their party as more united than divided. Seventy percent said they’re at least satisfied with the Democratic politicians who currently hold office, and 72 percent satisfied with or enthusiastic about the party’s future.
GOP and GOP-leaning voters also gave their party positive marks, although by a smaller margin. Fifty-one percent said they are satisfied or better with their party’s current officeholders, and 60 percent satisfied or better with their party’s future. They said, 47 percent to 35 percent, that the Republican Party is more divided than it is united.
Independent voters who lean toward a party, perhaps unsurprisingly, tended to be a little less enthusiastic than the self-described Republicans and Democrats, but they were not notably likelier to express any upset. Most partisan-leaning independents, though, end up voting more or less like the party faithful.
Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroup:
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted March 7 to 8 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some but not all potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.