Early Presidential Preferences

I know it's way too early (and polls this early are pretty meaningless), but I'm a political junkie and I find things like this extremely interesting. As expected, this Public Policy Polling survey shows that Hillary Clinton is far out in the lead among Democrats -- and if she wants the nomination, I doubt she would even have any serious opponent.

But what made this survey even more interesting is that PPP also asked about preferences if Clinton was to decide not to run -- and about preferences if both Clinton and Biden were to not run for the nomination. It gives us an idea of the popularity of some of the other Democrats. I was gratified to see just how popular Elizabeth Warren has become in the short time she has been in the Senate. A couple of years ago, she was a virtually unknown public official. Now she is the third most popular Democrat nationwide.

Meanwhile, the Republican field is bunched up, with no real favorite yet. The only significant thing is the fall of Chris Christie -- who has gone from leading candidate to back in the pack.

This Public Policy Polling survey was done between January 23rd and 26th of 334 Democratic primary voters and 457 Republican primary voters -- with a 5.4 point margin of error for Democrats and a 4.6 margin of error for Republicans.