Warren backers fund poll stoking Clinton doubts

A group of major liberal donors who want Elizabeth Warren to run for president have paid for a poll intended to show that Hillary Clinton does not excite the Democratic base and would be vulnerable in a 2016 general election.

The automated poll of nearly 900 registered voters, conducted last week by Public Policy Polling, found that 48 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, compared to 43 percent who viewed the former secretary of State favorably.


While Clinton — the prospective favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination should she enter the race — holds leads over every major GOP candidate tested in the poll, she doesn’t break 50 percent against any, and some are well within striking distance. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker comes closest, with Clinton leading him by a margin of 45 percent to 42 percent (with 14 percent not sure who they’d vote for) – within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.

The poll was provided to POLITICO by one of the donors who funded it, who asked to remain anonymous. It does not directly ask respondents to rate Warren’s favorability or to choose between the Massachusetts Senator and Clinton, nor does it pit Warren against any of the prospective GOP candidates. But it appears to be part of a broader effort by liberal Democratic donors and activists to make the case that Warren, who has repeatedly insisted she has no interest in running for president, could defeat Clinton for the Democratic nomination and also would be a more viable general election candidate.

A cadre of rich donors and some in organized labor view Clinton as too close to Wall Street or too hawkish, and also insufficiently aggressive in her stances on combating income inequality, climate change and big money in politics. While some on the left are working to pull Warren into the race, others see the prospect of her candidacy as a way to coax Clinton to the left on their animating issues.

Several questions in the poll cast Warren as a champion for the working and middle class, while others highlighted Clinton’s support for the invasions of Iraq and Libya, and suggested she is in Wall Street’s pocket.

One question – which found 49 percent of voters more likely to support a presidential candidate “who wanted to bring the big banks under more control” – began by noting that Warren “has said that special interests like Wall Street have rigged the system in their favor.”

Another – which found 57 percent of respondents less likely to support a candidate “who doesn’t want to hold Wall Street accountable for its financial speculation” – begins by pointing out that Clinton has been paid as much as $200,000 per speech from big banks. And, it asserts, she “has failed to call for accountability by banks for speculation which led to the financial collapse in 2008.”

Clinton ally David Brock noted that Clinton has called for greater oversight of derivatives and other complex financial products, and he called the survey “classic push poll garbage” that’s “designed to reach a precooked conclusion.”

Brock challenged the accuracy of other characterizations of Clinton’s stances in the poll, including its assertion that she “has remained silent” on the issue of reducing student loan rates – one of Warren’s top issues.

As a senator from New York in 2006, Clinton sponsored a bill called the called the Student Borrower Bill of Rights to base monthly loan payments on income.

Correct the Record, a project of the Brock-founded super PAC American Bridge that attempts to diffuse political attacks against Clinton includes a lengthy defense of Clinton’s efforts to expand college affordability.

Brock called the PPP poll “a series of false representations of Hillary Clinton’s record masquerading as opinion research.”

But PPP director Tom Jensen defended the poll as an earnest effort to assess Clinton’s weaknesses, asserting she likely “will be testing a lot of this stuff in her own polling.”

The results show she “ has some vulnerability – and Warren a lot of appeal – when it comes to their records on the financial crisis and related economic issues,” Jensen said. “If Clinton does end up running, she will need to take a tougher approach toward the financial industry or risk having the issue give her a lot of trouble with voters across the party spectrum,” he said.

The poll showed that, among respondents who identified as Democrats, Clinton had higher favorability ratings and wider leads over prospective GOP rivals than she did among respondents who said they were Republicans. But Democrats and Republicans both responded negatively to questions linking Clinton to Wall Street.

It would defy establishment Republican sensibilities for the GOP nominee to attack Clinton for being beholden to Wall Street, but Jensen predicted “Republicans will use any line of attack – no matter how disingenuous it might be – if they think it could help them win.”

The poll was conducted on January 20 and 21, and collected 80 percent of its responses by phone and 20 percent online.