In the survey, respondents expressed more favorable feelings about Obama than about Clinton (by eight percentage points), but Clinton is basically matching Obama’s 2012 support among the key elements of the party’s base, and she’s outpacing his support among white unmarried women. Obama did better in 2012 among minority voters, but according to the survey, Clinton does better among white millennial voters. Clinton fell far behind against a generic Republican ticket among working-class white voters without college degrees.
To succeed Obama, a Democratic candidate has to animate secular voters and what Greenberg calls the rising American electorate (unmarried women, people of color, and younger voters). These slices of the population will make up a majority of the total electorate for the first time in 2016, according to the pollster.
Greenberg insisted Clinton’s progressive campaign agenda is not a mirror image of Obama’s governing platform. “I would dispute that Obama was on this agenda” of equal pay, preserving Medicare and Social Security, promoting infrastructure spending, helping working women and reducing college debt burdens, he said, pointing to questions posed to respondents as part of the survey.
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