WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – If voters were to choose the next president for the leadership qualities they admire the most, Bernie Sanders would the runaway favorite to win this year’s election.

This is one of the conclusions that can be drawn from a new poll by Gallup assessing the presidential candidates as leaders.

The independent senator from Vermont, who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, scores best across the board on 12 leadership qualities polled by Gallup and does particularly well on the traits people say make them most likely to vote for a candidate: “inspiring,” “visionary,” “courageous” and “caring about individuals.”

The new survey provides some answers to the question of why Sanders has done so well in spite of the hurdles he faced at the beginning of the campaign — his age, his low name recognition, his lack of party affiliation, and his self-branding as a “democratic socialist.”

It also explains the ambivalence and low favorability ratings for the two frontrunners, Clinton and Donald Trump, who both score quite low in these top leadership attributes but do better in qualities like “intense” and “competitive.”

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Trump also does well on “enthusiastic” and “emphasizes success,” while Clinton scores well on “prepared,” “analytical” and “focused.”

“Both Trump and Clinton get short shrift from the public on exactly those leadership dimensions which appear to be most correlated with a differentially high likelihood to vote for the candidate,” Gallup researchers Frank Newport and Jim Harter say in commenting on the report.

Obviously, they continue, that hasn’t held either back from becoming the likely nominee.

“But in the forthcoming general election fight, an increased emphasis on the dimensions on which they now get little credit could have powerful returns,” the Gallup authors suggest. “In short, this analysis suggests Clinton and Trump may have a lot to gain, if they can influence their image in these specific areas.”

Gallup surveyed 7,500 participants, asking them to rank the candidates on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the 12 leadership qualities, which the polling organization identified from its four decades of studying 50,000 prospective leaders and senior executives in 200 organizations.

The percentage rating was determined by the number of participants awarding a 4 or 5 to each of the candidates.

Sanders lead over the other candidates (Ted Cruz was also included) was well into the double digits on the four favored leadership qualities. He also led the field in “consistent” and “focused.”

Sanders lagged Clinton, but only slightly, in “prepared,” “analytical,” “emphasizes success” and “intense,” but he significantly lagged both Clinton and Trump in “competitive.”

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Trump, for his part, was off the charts with an 84% rating for “competitive,” but he also beat both Sanders (barely) and Clinton (by 20 points) as “enthusiastic.”

The Gallup analysts emphasize these are not necessarily qualities the candidates possess, but the survey “documents the extent to which the public perceives each characteristic as being associated with the candidate.”

Thus, the public’s overall image of Clinton “is clearly on the hardworking, ‘wonkish’ side of the ledger,” the authors write.

The view of Trump that emerges “is a picture of a candidate who has been defined by his historical business and television media persona — driven and focused on success, with the collateral consequence of having little interest in caring about specific individuals.”

Sanders does well in all dimensions, “with a more even distribution of perceived leadership characteristics than is the case for the other candidates.”

Not coincidentally, the authors suggest, Sanders is the only candidate rated more positively than negatively in Gallup’s national favorability surveys.

So why is Sanders trailing Clinton in primary voting?

“There are issues for voters outside of what we’re measuring here,” the Washington Post quoted Gallup’s Newport as saying, including such things as candidates’ policies or track record.

Ironically, however, the two frontrunners, who are both promising they are the candidates who can get things done, will have a lot of trouble getting anything done unless they can improve on these leadership qualities.

One of the two will be the winner in November, but “they’ll have a real liability” once they’re in office, Newport said in the Post.

“We’ve got two frontrunners entering with real deficits that need to be worked with,” he said.