WASHINGTON -- Democrats are largely happy to have Hillary Clinton as their all-but-anointed frontrunner, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted Friday through Sunday.
A 57 percent majority of Democrats and independents who lean towards the Democratic Party say Clinton, who announced her candidacy on Sunday, is their preferred 2016 nominee, while just a quarter would rather rally behind someone else. And most expect her to succeed -- 80 percent say it's at least somewhat likely that she'll win the Democratic nomination, and 77 percent think that she'll win the presidency.
Eighty-two percent say they'd at least consider voting for her, while 48 percent definitely will. In contrast, a April 2007 ABC/Washington Post poll found just 20 percent of Democrats willing to commit to a relatively unknown Barack Obama.
The exact degree of Democrats' excitement about Clinton is varied. Forty-four percent describe themselves as "enthusiastic," while 36 percent opt for a less fervent "satisfied." Eleven percent are "dissatisfied" or "upset."
Those results are similar to a November 2007 poll from CNN/ORC, which found that 39 percent of registered Democrats said they were enthusiastic about Clinton, with 39 percent satisfied and 21 percent dissatisfied or upset.
That year, however, more than 70 percent of Democrats also expressed positive opinions about Obama and John Edwards. This year, Clinton, who's polling at about 60 percent both nationally and in Iowa, faces no such formidable primary rivals.
Those Democrats who voted for Obama in the 2008 primary are now largely content with Clinton, if not quite as highly enthusiastic, according to the HuffPost/YouGov poll. And for all the occasional rumblings that Clinton could face a challenge from the left, she has the support of most liberals, too. Self-described liberal Democrats are slightly more likely than the party's moderates or conservatives to say they're enthusiastic about Clinton, and 63 percent call her their preferred nominee.
Even among the Democrats who'd prefer to have a different candidate, 81 percent still say they'd at least consider supporting her, and more than half say they'd be at least satisfied to have her as a nominee.
But the HuffPost/YouGov poll also confirms that the cross-party appeal she gained during her tenure as secretary of state has largely dissipated. While 48 percent of Americans say they'd at least consider voting for Clinton, another 43 percent -- including nearly half of independents and 83 percent of Republicans -- say they absolutely wouldn't support her. That floor is roughly consistent with polling prior to the 2008 election. Sixty-eight percent of Americans say it's somewhat or very likely that Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, and 53 percent say it's somewhat or very likely that she'll be elected the next president.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted April 10-13 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.
The Huffington Post 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. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the poll's 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.
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