Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz have something in common, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll: Roughly half of the state’s likely primary voters think they would make poor or terrible presidents.
Voters were stingy with their “great” and “good” ratings, but Cruz, with 36 percent, got more positive responses from voters. Sanders and Clinton got high ratings from 30 percent of voters, Trump from 29 percent and Marco Rubio from 25 percent.
More than half of the likely primary voters said Trump and Clinton would be “poor” or “terrible” presidents, with the emphasis on “terrible.” Clinton got that forecast from 49 percent of voters, Trump from 42 percent — not surprising since those responses came from voters in both parties, but an ominous finding in the search for one person who will lead the country for four years.
“The suggestion here is that for candidates, particularly Trump, where you have 12 percent who think he could be great,” said Daron Shaw, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the poll. “But then you get 42 percent saying he would be terrible, which outstrips everything.
No big surprise that Cruz polled the best, but even he polled worse than Planned Parenthood.
