Poll: Obama Would Beat Trump If An Election Was Held Today

Former President Barack Obama’s popularity has endured since he left office, and the latest Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey obtained by Politico indicates that  54 percent of respondents would vote for Obama and 43 percent would vote for President Donald Trump if an election was held today. Only three percent of respondents said they were unsure how they’d vote.

The poll, paid for by Eric Schmeltzer, a progressive public relations consultant, is, of course, a hypothetical as Obama cannot run for office again because he’s already served two terms.

“IN RECENT DAYS, President DONALD TRUMP and his administration have reinjected BARACK OBAMA into the political fray. Privately around town, some Republicans have wondered about the wisdom of doing that, since polls consistently show that OBAMA is one of the best-liked people in public life,” according to Politico’s Playbook.

Trump lashed out at the former president last week after news outlets obtained a tape of a web talk between the former president and members of the Obama Alumni Association in which he said the “rule of law is at risk” in the United States after it emerged the Justice Department dismissed the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

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“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed – about the justice department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama reportedly said.

“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury [in fact Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI] just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic – not just institutional norms – but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk,” he continued. “And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”

In response, Trump peddled an unsubstantiated “Obamagate” conspiracy theory, and even before that was criticized for retweeting a conspiracy theory suggesting that Obama “was the one running the Russian hoax.”

Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.