Though he insists he’s not running for president in 2016, former GOP nominee Mitt Romney is the frontrunner in a
McClatchy-Marist poll released Monday.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of President George W. Bush and son of President George H.W. Bush, is a close second, according to the poll, which showed Romney with the support of some 19 percent of Republican voters and Bush with 14 percent.
Bush has said he will decide by the end of the year whether he will seek the White House in 2016.
During a recent television interview with a Miami television station,
Bush announced that he’s working on an e-book, to be released in early 2015, along with 250,000 emails from his two terms as governor in the name of "transparency" and to "let people make up their mind."
"I think I would be a good president," he said in the interview with WPLG-TV.
After Romney and Bush, the McClatchy-Marist poll showed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with 9 percent each and retired neurosurgeon and tea party darling Dr. Ben Carson with 8 percent.
Should Romney decline to enter the race (something he publicly maintains though people close to him have said he is considering running), Bush leads with 16 percent support; Huckabee with 12 percent; Christie with 10 percent; and Carson with 8 percent.
McClatchy writer David Lightman suggests that Bush, who clearly has name recognition, is "vulnerable."
"Undecided" got the most support in the survey without Romney, with nearly 1 in 5 choosing that option, he writes.
Being an establishment candidate who is not affiliated with the tea party wing of the GOP could hurt Bush in a primary, where grassroots conservatives turn out heavily. The poll shows tea partyers supporting Huckabee, Carson or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a strident constitutionalist.
Name recognition is also key for Democrats, for whom former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton garnered a whopping 62 percent support. The next closest potential candidate was Vice President Joe Biden who received 11 percent, followed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren
— "the emerging voice of the party’s liberal wing of Congress"
— with 9 percent. Warren has insisted she is not going to run.
The poll showed that Democrats want to "change course" from President Barack Obama, with 58 percent of those surveyed saying they want a nominee who will move in a different direction from Obama.
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