Howard Schultz (AP)

This probably isn't how Howard Schultz expected his presidential-candidacy rollout to go.

The billionaire former Starbucks CEO has launched a book tour, during which he is gauging voter interest in his plan to run for president in 2020.

The lifelong Democrat angered party leaders and activists with his surprise announcement that, if he runs, he will bypass the Democratic primaries and compete in the general election against President Donald Trump and whomever the Democrats nominate.

Democrats also were annoyed by his attacks on core party shibboleths such as universal health care and a higher marginal tax rate on billionaires.

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Many Democrats worry an independent Schultz candidacy would lead to Donald Trump's re-election. (AP)

In a TV interview, potential presidential candidate Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called him "Howard what's-his-name -- the coffee guy" and a "total idiot." Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), who's already in the presidential race, said it's "ridiculous [that billionaires] think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everyone else."

Schultz has also faced hecklers during his speaking engagements, leading him to say:

"We shouldn't get to a place where there are people yelling from the rafters that because you have been successful, you are a bad person and we're going to be punitive to you. That's, to me, the antithesis of the spirit of the country."

The bad press appears to be making an impact.

A new poll from Change Research put Schultz's favorability rating at a measly 4 percent among Democrats, Republicans and independents, The Hill reports.

This led Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, to tweak Shultz on Twitter by saying that even Darth Vader is better liked.

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People with a higher favorability rating than @HowardSchultz:



-Darth Vader



-The referee who helped Rams get to #SuperBowlSunday



-Carter Page



-Big Chungus (this idea came from our kids)



-Your next door neighbor#SundayThoughts https://t.co/lSaVqLouKN — Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) February 3, 2019

Lieu is exaggerating a little bit. The poll, after all, found that 56 percent of respondents had never even heard of Schultz despite the recent media hype surrounding his potential candidacy. Among those who do know his name, 50 percent of Democrats don't like him, with 43 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of independents also putting him in the "unfavorable" category.

Overall, 4 percent of respondents viewed him favorably and 40 percent viewed him unfavorably.

The poll suggests Democrats do have reason to fear a Schultz run. It concluded that his name on the ballot as an independent would shave, on average, about four percentage points from the Democratic nominee's vote total and just one percentage point from Trump's.

Change Research says the poll's margin of error is 2.7 percentage points.

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President Donald Trump would benefit from a Schultz candidacy, polls suggest. (AP)

Schultz does have some reason to believe his odds are better than this survey suggests. His own internal polling has him taking about 17 percent of the vote in a three-way race between Schultz, Republican Trump and, for the Democrats, either California Sen. Kamala Harris or Warren. That's about what businessman Ross Perot scored in 1992 with his quirky independent presidential run.

In Schultz's two private ballots tests, NBC News reports, "Trump leads the Democrat by a margin of 33 percent to 32 percent," indicating a Schultz candidacy could indeed bring about Trump's re-election.

Internal polling, it should be noted, is typically skewed toward the candidate who commissioned it. The questions asked by the Schultz pollsters have not been publicly revealed.

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So, it's an internal horserace poll. We don't know the full text of the questionnaire. We're not naming the pollster who conducted it or sharing actual toplines. And we're writing about it because...? pic.twitter.com/ta5qpMGXmv — Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) February 4, 2019

2020 is shaping up to be an unpredictable election, and not just because Schultz might run as an independent and it likely will feature the always unpredictable President Trump.

As Trump showed in 2016, issues long viewed as belonging solely to one party or the other are actually far more fungible than we thought they were -- and this trend is continuing. One example: An Oct. 2018 Harris poll found that 52 percent of Republican voters support "Medicare for all," a catch-all phrase for a government-provided universal health-care system that is widely viewed as a Democratic issue and anathema to Republican politicians.

The next presidential election also will be unpredictable because, Pew Research Center points out, "nonwhites will account for a third of eligible voters -- their largest share ever." This isn't necessarily good news for Democrats, for Trump has proved successful at stoking fears among white voters that their influence is waning in the country.

Another wildcard for the 2020 election: one-in-10 eligible voters will be between the ages 18 and 23, but no one knows whether they will show up at the polls in significant numbers.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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