White House Watch: Castro Is No Danger to Trump Yet
Hispanic longshot Julian Castro impressed many observers in the recent Democratic presidential debates, but right now he's no threat to President Trump.
The latest Rasmussen Reports White House Watch national telephone and online survey shows Trump beating Castro 46% to 40% among Likely U.S. Voters. But 14% are undecided when given this hypothetical 2020 presidential matchup. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Like many of the Democratic hopefuls at this point, however, Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio and a member of President Obama's Cabinet, has a name recognition problem. He’s viewed favorably by 35% of voters and unfavorably by 38%, with 10% Very Favorable and 23% Very Unfavorable. But 27% don’t know enough about him to venture any kind of opinion.
Given the large number of candidates entering the race for next year’s Democratic nomination, Rasmussen Reports has opted to run a series of matchups over two-week cycles as the contest continues to develop. These longer cycles mean the matchup findings will be based on 5,000 respondents rather than the usual 1,000 for our regular surveys, and they lower the margin of error. See the results in surveys so far.
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The survey of 5,000 Likely Voters was conducted July 7-11 and 14-18, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
Former Vice President Joe Biden may be finding the going a little rougher in his own party, but he’s still the most successful Democrat against Trump.
Castro picks up just 69% support among his fellow Democrats, compared to Biden’s 80%. Trump has the backing of 80% of Republicans and holds a double-digit lead among voters not affiliated with either major party.
Like the other Democratic contenders, Castro leads among those under 40, but older voters prefer the incumbent. Trump has a 13-point lead among men, and he and Castro are tied among women voters who generally prefer the Democratic challengers.
Trump leads Castro among whites but trails by over 30 points among blacks. The two are tied among other minority voters.
House Democrats voted earlier this week to rebuke Trump, saying his criticism of the far-left congressional members of the so-called Squad is racist. Voters are closely divided over whether the president is a racist, but then one-in-three Democrats think it’s racism any time a white politician criticizes a politician of color.
Democratic voters tend to believe that their representatives in Congress should be more like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi than like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leader of the Squad.
Federal immigration authorities began a major deportation operation this past weekend, and for Republicans it’s long overdue.But Democrats disagree and don’t like the way the Trump administration is cracking down on illegal immigration.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.
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The survey of 4,500 Likely Voters was conducted July 7-11 and 14-18, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
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