WASHINGTON — Democratic voters feel generally positive about all of their top candidates running for president, but they have only moderate confidence that their party’s nomination process is fair, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
U.S. voters from across the political spectrum have mixed confidence in the fairness of either party’s system for picking a candidate, but Democrats are especially likely to have doubts about their own party’s process. Among Democratic voters, 41% say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the Democratic Party’s nomination process, while 34% have moderate confidence and 25% have little to no confidence.
Among Republicans, meanwhile, 61% say they have high confidence in their party’s process, and just 13% have low confidence. President Donald Trump has only nominal opposition in the GOP nomination process, and several state Republican parties have even canceled holding a primary.
For Democrats, the results reveal early signs of fallout from what’s shaping into a contentious and divisive primary, and sharpen focus on the prospect that the nominee may be chosen in a messy vote at a brokered convention. The anxieties have been exacerbated by a breakdown in the vote count in the kickoff Iowa caucus, an outcome Nevada officials are working to avoid in their caucus Saturday.