I know there are people out there who think Hillary Clinton is a formidable candidate. I am not one of them. Hillary Clinton has exactly the same problem Jeb Bush had… you can’t identify any measurable slice of the party who wants to vote for him… but Hillary has the bovine [mc_name name=’Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’W000797′ ] running interference for her and blocking all possible competitors. Against her, the GOP is fielding the strongest array of candidates we’ve had since I started following politics.

Earlier I posted on the Quinnipiac poll.

In head to head matchups, there is more interesting news. Clinton wins 47-40 when facing Trump. Clinton leads Rubio by a meaningless 44-43 and is tied with [mc_name name=’Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001098′ ] at 44-44.

Yesterday, a CNN/ORC poll was released. It showed the same line up as the Quinnipiac poll: Trump in first and followed by Cruz. Carson and Rubio were tied, though I think this is deceptive as Rubio is probably gaining strength and Carson is flaming out. The actual numbers disagree by an order of magnitude indicating that someone is very, very wrong.

Once you get inside the CNN poll to the head-to-head match-ups you find Hillary is weak in that poll, too:

The poll, however, suggests Clinton faces a stiff challenge from each of three Republicans at the top of the field. She narrowly tops Donald Trump within the poll’s margin of sampling error, 49% to 47%, in a hypothetical general election matchup. But she falls behind [mc_name name=’Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001098′ ] by 2 points (Cruz 48% to Clinton 46%, a shift since last month when Cruz trailed Clinton 50% to 47%) and 3 points behind [mc_name name=’Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’R000595′ ] (49% Rubio to 46% Clinton). Among independent voters, Clinton trails Rubio and Cruz by 12 points each, while running even with Trump.

I would suggest that Hillary is never going to poll any better than this. First, she is widely disliked and mistrusted. Those opinions are baked into her candidacy. She has been in the public eye since 1992 and usually <5% of any poll sample doesn't have an opinion about her. On the GOP side, typically a third of the sample will NOT have an opinion on the candidate's honesty, etc. They only way Clinton can level that playing field is by making the Republican seem just as dishonest. On the other hand, other than Donald Trump (who she only leads within the MoE in both polls), the GOP candidates are not well known outside the GOP electorate. No one knows what will happen over the next year but, against Hillary, we have the best chance to win the White House that we have had since 1988.