Jeb Bush’s standing among Republican primary voters continues to improve, Marco Rubio remains popular with the party and two-thirds of GOP voters say they couldn’t support Donald Trump.
Those are the findings from a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal, which was conducted June 14-18 – during the build-up and coverage of Bush’s and Trump’s official presidential announcements.
According to the poll, 75% of Republicans say they could see themselves supporting Bush for president, versus 22% who couldn’t (+53 points) – up from his 70%-27% score in April (+43), and 49%-42% score in March (+7).
RELATED: Jeb Bush to conservatives: I ‘stood’ with Terri Schiavo
Rubio, the Florida senator, has the highest margin of support among Republicans, with 74% who could see themselves backing him and 15% who couldn’t (+59) – unchanged from April’s poll.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is expected to announce his presidential bid next month, has plenty of upside with GOP voters: 57% could see themselves supporting him, versus 19% who couldn’t (+38), but there’s another 21% who say they don’t know his name.
The most unpopular GOP presidential candidate in the poll? Donald Trump, who announced his White House bid last Tuesday (but who still has yet to file his “statement of candidacy” with the Federal Election Commission). Just 32% of Republican primary voters say they could see themselves supporting him, compared with a whopping 66% who couldn’t (-34).
Below are the scores on this question for the full GOP field:
American voters also say their top concerns about the upcoming presidential election are wealthy individuals and corporations who might have too much influence who over wins, as well as campaigns that spend more time on negative attacks than proposing solutions, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Thirty-three percent of voters say the influence of wealthy individuals and corporations is their top concern, while 25% say they’re more worried about negative attacks. Another 16% are more concerned that nothing will change no matter who wins, and 12% believe that too many wealthy candidates don’t understand the economic problems of average Americans. But only 4% of voters say their top concern are dynastic candidates – like Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul – who are from families who have run for the presidency before. The margin of error on this question in the NBC/WSJ poll is plus-minus 6.4 percentage points. The full poll – which will include the horserace numbers for the Democratic and Republican fields, as well as general-election numbers – will be released on Monday night at 6:30 pm ET.
Mark Murray Recommended
