Bloomberg Needs To Stay Out Of The Presidential Race

Former Republican mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg is still making noises about possible jumping into the 2016 presidential race as an independent. He has even said he (like Donald Trump) would be willing to spend up to a billion dollars of his own money in a campaign.

Personally, I think he would be stupid to do that. I'm sure it feeds his ego to think of himself as president, but more people in this country have an unfavorable opinion of him than favorable (25% favorable to 33% unfavorable), and a significant plurality (43%) don't even know who he is. He would have to spend that billion just to get some name recognition, and the chances are that wouldn't get him elected president. I doubt he could do as well as Ross Perot did in a losing campaign (and maybe not even as well as Ralph Nader).

As the chart above shows, no group would give him more than 6% support (and most would give him even less). That would give him an incredibly tall mountain to climb to even become a viable candidate.

These numbers are from a recent YouGov Poll -- done between January 27th and 30th of a random national sample of 2,000 adults, with a margin of error of 2.9 points.