Paul Ryan: Beloved By Republican Primary Voters, But Not Their Pick For President

Rep. Paul Ryan is the most popular of all 2016 Republican Presidential candidates in terms of favorability, but lags in horse-race polling.

 
Congressman Paul Ryan, the young, wonky, slightly-awkward Wisconsin Congressman and most recent Republican Vice Presidential nominee has had his ups and downs since the start of the 2012 Presidential cycle. After what were surely flattering entreaties from his party to enter the race for the White House that year, he was picked from a large and impressive line-up of Republican politicians as one-half of the Presidential ticket with Mitt Romney.

Despite a close race, the Romney-Ryan ticket lost to Obama-Biden by a disappointing 51-47%. Both men appeared shell-shocked.

The undeniable disappointment on behalf of Republican voters and punditry at the result took a slight toll on the House Budget Committee Chairman's personal popularity. He saw a net positive favorability rating pre-2012 election turn negative afterwards.

In the 13 national surveys of Ryan's favorability since November 2012, only four of them found him with a higher favorable than unfavorable percentage. Since November 2012, he averages a 39% favorable rating, and a 41% unfavorable rating.

But while Ryan may need a little rehabilitation on his image with general election voters before running for President (which he has not ruled out), he's as beloved as ever by Republican primary voters, as a recent Pew Research poll made clear:

According to Pew, 2/3 of Republicans and Republican leaners view Ryan favorably, putting him in a very comfortable position when compared to other likely 2016 GOP contenders (Rand Paul is viewed favorably by just over half of Republicans, Marco Rubio by half, and Chris Christie by 47%).

Fortunately for Ryan, the Pew finding showing him the most popular 2016 GOPer is replicated in ALL TEN post-2012 election surveys of Republicans and/or GOP primary voters. In every single survey, Ryan's favorability score exceeds all other Republicans.

The data in the table below shows the average favorability rating of every potential major 2016 GOP primary candidate since the 2012 election:

All surveys used in the averages can be found here.

For whatever reason (which must at least partially include name recognition), Ryan leads a pretty impressive list of potential candidates in terms of favorability, while the nationally popular Chris Christie ranks 2nd to LAST, behind the uber-socially conservative Rick Santorum, and the  humiliated Rick Perry.

That's why some might be surprised to learn that despite all the love from his party, Ryan's not performing all that well in the early 2016 primary horse-race. In fact, in an average of all primary surveys since the presidential election, Ryan finishes third, behind Marco Rubio and Chris Christie:

Moderate voters skew HEAVILY Democratic in PPP's 2016 polling

Map of 2012/2008 election results among MODERATE voters only. Exit polling was only conducted in 32 states in 2012. In the 18 states where there was no survey, 2008 exit poll results were used. Red = Republican, Blue = Democrat, Green = TIE

I consider myself to be pretty moderate on a number of policy issues, mostly social: abortion, immigration, gay marriage, the death penalty, separation of church and state. But if I were asked by an exit pollster my "ideology" on a scale of very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal, I'd probably put myself in the somewhat conservative side of things. My views on taxation and the role of government in the economy shove me to the right. But there's a significant portion of the country that identifies their political ideology as "moderate" (41% to be exact). Who are these so-called "moderate voters" that typically make up the plurality of the presidential electorate, and how do they vote? Even more importantly, how will they vote in 2016?

If early Public Policy Polling surveys on 2016 are any indicator, Republicans will be STOMPED by Democrats among "moderates." In fact, the GOP is poised to win the LEAST amount of so-called "moderate voters" ever (or at least since exit polling began in 1976), especially if Hillary Clinton is their nominee. The chart below documents the moderate vote for Hillary Clinton vs. any GOP opponent in every national or state 2016 poll conducted by PPP over the last month. Unfortunately, the very few polling firms besides PPP that have already started surveying the 2016 race did not provide crosstabs for ideological breakdown. So the focus will be on PPP's results:

If you operate under the assumption that Conservatives vote Republican, Liberals vote Democrat, and Moderates split their vote, you'd be wrong, according to PPP...dead wrong. Hillary Clinton leads Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, and Scott Walker among moderates in every state & nat'l poll over the last month, by MASSIVE margins. In fact, the best that any Republican is able to do against Hillary among moderates is Paul Ryan's 57-32% deficit in the state of Pennsylvania. But even then, Hillary leads by 25 points. The WORST any Republican does with moderates is Marco Rubio in Michigan AND his home-state of Florida. Hillary leads him with moderate voters in both states, 65-16% and 71-23% respectively. That's border-line embarrassing for Rubio. To make it worse, Hillary has averaged a 63-25% lead over Republicans with moderates in PPP polling over the last month.