Valliere said the 2016 presidential contest is anybody’s race.

“I love seeing conventional wisdom proved wrong,” Valliere said. “It’s a mind-boggling concept: Both parties are terrified that their front-runners could be their nominees.”

Valliere said that there’s more certainty on the Democratic side, where Hillary Clinton should emerge victorious over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

“The Democrats aren’t going to nominate a 74-year-old socialist from Brooklyn to the White House,” Valliere said. “Still, if you asked a room full of Democratic strategists, you’d find that almost 15 out of 20 are concerned about Hillary Clinton as a general election candidate” due to concerns over her poll numbers and fear of a possible prosecution stemming from an investigation of her personal e-mails by the FBI.

On the Republican side of the aisle, however, the picture is muddled. Valliere said that  front-runners Donald Trump and Benjamin Carson are unlikely to emerge as nominees.

“What usually happens on the GOP side is a primary in two phases,” Valliere said. “Act one is the venting. ... Voters are angry, they hate Washington and they love outsiders. That’s where we are now. Act two begins on February 1 in the Iowa caucus and then speeds up as the primary season proceeds, and the focus is different: It’s on temperament. Republican voters are going to ask themselves if they’re comfortable if Trump has his finger on the button.”

That, he said, leaves the nomination up for grabs between five mainstream Republican candidates: Chris Christie, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

“This could go to the convention and we could see a brokered convention,” Valliere said. “There could also be a third-party candidate. If the general election ends up between Hillary and Bush, it would be the lowest turnout ever.”

Valliere said faulty measuring tools cloud our view of the current poltical climate.

“I think there’s a crisis in the polling industry,” Valliere said. “I don’t believe in polls anymore; there are serious problems with methodology.”

Valliere’s criticism of the polling industry comes one week after Kentucky voted Republican Matt Bevin to its governorship by a 9-point margin after he trailed Democrat Jack Conway in the polls leading up to the election day.
 

First « 1 2 » Next