The latest Q-poll numbers have dropped and there aren’t really a lot of surprises in the top lines. (Well… there are a couple of exceptions but we’ll get to those in a minute.) What was really startling, though, was the results of the “open ended” questions about several of the candidates. Most specifically, the massively leading, top of the list responses for Hillary Clinton have to be giving her team nightmares. (Connecticut Post… emphasis added)

Clinton leads the Democratic field with 45 percent, down from 55 percent July 30, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont at 22 percent and Biden at 18 percent. No other candidate tops 1 percent with 11 percent undecided. This is Sanders’ highest tally and closest margin. Clinton tops the Democrats’ “no way” list with 11 percent. “Liar” is the first word that comes to mind more than others in an open-ended question when voters think of Clinton. “Arrogant” is the word for Trump and voters say “Bush” when they think of Bush.

Here’s the high end of the list.

Holy cow. You get 394 responses just by combining the top three results of “Liar, Dishonest and Untrustworthy.” You pretty much have to add up all of the other words on the list to catch up with those three. And this isn’t just a list of responses by Republicans… that’s everyone. What’s truly amazing is that this is clearly the prevailing American perception at this point and yet, Clinton is still the Democrat frontrunner. I’m not sure if that says more about her or the party.

Just for fun, here’s the top of the list for Mr. Trump.

The full results are here in .pdf form if you’d care to browse them. As I said at the top, the biggest hitters haven’t changed all that much. On the GOP side, Trump is still swamping the entire field with 28%, more than doubling Ben Carson who is at 12. Everyone else is still fighting for scraps in single digits, with Bush, Cruz and Rubio tied at 7. Walker is at 6, with Kasich and Fiorina tied at 5.

On the Democrats’ side, Hillary (the aforementioned dishonest, untrustworthy liar) has dropped another ten points to 45, still more than doubling Bernie Sanders at 22. The new kid on the block is the still undeclared Joe Biden who has jumped up to 18. Imagine what he could do if he was actually running. But wait… you don’t really need to imagine too much because the head to head match-ups for the general give us a hint.

Matchups among all American voters show Biden tops Trump 48 – 40 percent. He beats Bush 45 – 39 percent and gets 44 percent to Rubio’s 41 percent. Clinton edges Trump 45 – 41 percent. She gets 42 percent to Bush’s 40 percent and gets 44 percent to Rubio’s 43 percent. Sanders edges Trump 44 – 41 percent and edges Bush 43 – 39 percent. Rubio gets 41 percent to Sanders’ 40 percent. If Trump runs as a third party candidate, Clinton gets 40 percent, with 24 percent each for Bush and Trump.

The last two things to note here are probably the least touted in the media coverage. First of all, Biden is already outperforming Hillary in the general no matter who the GOP candidate is. But the second are the Trump numbers. Yeah, he’s still losing to everyone, but his numbers a month ago were in the low thirties. He’s now at 40 or 41 against any of the Democrats. That’s closing in on the margin of error and he’s within the margin of error when compared to how well the other perceived GOP top dogs would do. If I were tasked with selling Trump at this point I’d probably be out there showing that he’s just as competitive against Hillary (or Biden) as anyone else, so why not take a chance on the guy with the massive TVQ?

As I said, read through the rest of the numbers for some light Thursday entertainment, but those word cloud issues are the real news of the day. Wow. Will the Democrats actually nominate the dishonest, untrustworthy liar?