Mediaboss Marketing

Almost everyone who covers politics thinks Hillary Clinton is a cinch to win the Democratic nomination in 2016. Or if not a cinch, a heavy favorite.

Which leaves all of us to feverishly searchfor a vulnerability -- any vulnerability -- that could make this an actual contest. This most often leads to hypotheticals about someone (mostly Elizabeth Warren) running to Clinton'sleft and exposing lingering liberal unhappiness with the Wall Street-friendly former first family.

All except there has been almost no evidence of such unhappiness.In fact, poll after poll has shown Clinton does just fine-- if not better -- among liberals.

Until now (but only kind of).

A new Field Poll of the California electorate asked Democrats in that state whom they favor in the 2016 primary. And yet again, Clinton leads Warren by a huge margin -- 42 points. No surprise there.

But! For once, apoll actually shows something of a liberal defection to Warren. It shows Clinton leads the Massachusetts senatorby a much-smaller 11-point margin among those who identify as "strongly liberal" -- 46 percent to 35 percent.

At the same time, this is a pretty small piece of the Democratic pie -- less than one-third-- and the sample size is just 116, which means there's a huge margin of error. The rest of Democrats, by contrast, favor Clinton 64-10.

Field poll

There's also, of course, the matter of Warren not actually running for president, and the fact that she still trails Clinton. Oh, and this is California, which has a different brand of liberal than the rest of the country does. If there's one state besides Massachusetts whereWarren could catch on, California would probably be it.

Indeed,the fact that this small sub-sample is possibly the first real polling evidence of a liberal openness toa non-Clinton candidate shows precisely how dominant she is in the early part of the 2016 campaign.

See the rest here:
The Fix: Here is your sliver of evidence that Hillary Clinton could lose a primary