Democrats are happier than Republicans in terms of the politicians their party has elected in the past, their nominees currently running for president and their prospects for the future, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds.
Three-quarters of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters describe themselves as enthusiastic about or satisfied with the choice of Hillary Clinton as their nominee, while 24 percent are either dissatisfied or upset. A smaller two-thirds majority of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they’re enthusiastic about or satisfied with Donald Trump, with 32 percent saying they’re dissatisfied or upset.
There’s a wider gap on feelings toward each party’s elected officials. Seventy-two percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, but just 40 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters, say they’re at least satisfied with the politicians in their party who currently hold office. Only 3 percent on the GOP side, compared with 20 percent on the Democrats’ consider themselves enthusiastic.
But perhaps the most significant gap is in regard to each party’s future. Seventy-one percent of voters on the Democratic side are at least satisfied, compared with 43 percent on the Republican side. Thirty percent of Democrats, but just 8 percent of Republicans, count themselves as enthusiastic.
Past HuffPost/YouGov polls conducted in March and last October showed similar differences between the parties, although Republicans were initially more enthusiastic about their field of candidates.
Sixty-three percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners now say their party is mostly united, with just 18 percent viewing it as more divided. By contrast, Republican voters overwhelmingly say their party is split, with 71 percent viewing the GOP as divided and only 13 percent as united.
Overall, voters consider the Democratic Party more united than divided by a 14-point margin, but say by a 67-point margin that the Republicans are more divided.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Aug. 11-12 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 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.
Before You Go
