Dems feel mixed about nomination process
WASHINGTON >> Democratic voters feel generally positive about all of their top candidates running for president, but they have only moderate confidence that their party’s nomination process is fair, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
U.S. voters from across the political spectrum have mixed confidence in the fairness of either party’s system for picking a candidate, but Democrats are especially likely to have doubts about their own party’s process. Among Democratic voters, 41% say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the Democratic Party’s nomination process, while 34% have moderate confidence and 25% have little to no confidence.
Among Republicans, meanwhile, 61% say they have high confidence in their party’s process, and just 13% have low confidence. President Donald Trump has only nominal opposition in the GOP nomination process, and several state Republican parties have even canceled holding a primary.
For Democrats, the results reveal early signs of fallout from what’s shaping into a contentious and divisive primary, and sharpen focus on the prospect that the nominee may be chosen in a messy vote at a brokered convention. The anxieties have been exacerbated by a breakdown in the vote count in the kickoff Iowa caucus, an outcome Nevada officials are working to avoid in their caucus today.
Julianne Morgan, 29, of Dayton, Ohio, said her confidence in the Democratic Party’s process was undercut earlier this month when Democrats delayed tabulating the results of the firstin-the-nation Iowa caucuses because of problems with a buggy mobile app.
Her concerns were further exacerbated this week after reading that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who is third in the delegate count, was excluded in hypothetical head-to-head matchups against Trump in some recent polls.
“It doesn’t sound like there’s been fair representation for all the candidates,” said Morgan, who is supporting Warren’s candidacy.
The poll builds on AP VoteCast’s earlier findings of distrust in the system among Democrats who voted in last week’s New Hampshire primary.