Candidate Appeal Quotes

I think Trump is a very interesting candidate in this sense: I think he has cross-party appeal.

I have been a Republican, and I've worked in Republican circles for so long, and I know that there are really smart, good policy ideas that are grounded in conservative ideology that could be persuasive for women, especially in an election where no one was really excited about either candidate.

I think when Sarah Palin opened her mouth and started talking, the more she talked, the less appealing she became.

First of all, no candidate is going to win by catering to the alleged Occupy Wall Street vote.

It's all about media culture and people on television, and that feeling comfortable, friendly, or warm toward a candidate [in the elections] is a reason people would emotionally attach themselves to that candidate. I get the mechanics of it, I just hate that it's true.

You can always find people, ordinary people, who will support your particular view, so it becomes a politics of personality, especially at the presidential level. People often go for somebody that they like or somebody that they can identify with.

When you're running for president, you're a guest in the living room for four years. And if people don't think you're going to be around the living room as a pleasant experience, they're not going to vote for you even if they agree with you.

What John McCain didn't realize was that Sarah Palin was his demographic. He thought he was appealing to younger women, and in fact, Sarah Palin appealed to people who were like McCain, old white guys, who thought she was sexy to skin a moose. That was a miscalculation, it didn't work. They didn't do the vetting, they didn't do the polling.

Hillary Clinton did better among working-class whites when she's running against Barack Hussein Obama. How is she doing now against an older, a professor type, who seems very unthreatening, very likable.

Just because somebody else likes a candidate doesn't necessarily mean everybody else will like him.

I like [ Rick] Santorum personally and respect him, but you wouldn't say that he was really that strong of an opponent. At the end of the day it wasn't like [Ronald] Reagan running against [George] Bush, or [George W.] Bush against [John] McCain, even. It's sort of surprising that Romney had as much trouble as he did, and I think it shows a weakness in appeal to those voters.

I think it is very possible he [Donald Trump] could be nominated and depending on how this all plays out, I would take him seriously in terms of being able to win because he's appealing to a very, very - he's appealing to fear.

Voters like to fall in love with presidential candidates, at least a little bit.

They [candidates] say, "I don't want to say anything controversial." And so nobody covers them. Then they blame the journalists, saying "Why don't they write down what I said?" In congressional races, 90 percent of the time the answer is, "Because you are boring and you don't have anything that makes me interested in listening to you. Why the heck should somebody write it down? There's nothing here worth hearing."

The difference there is that the [Donald] Trump number on change is so much larger than the lead that the other two have in their lanes. And that's going to be the challenge for those other two going forward. The other challenge for Marco Rubio, and this assumption that you're just going to get all those Bush and Kasich voters.

My brand of leadership, which is very focused on bringing people together, solving problems - it's what I have always tried to do - just had a hard time being as powerfully compelling in the campaign as I think it has been in previous years for other candidates.

Many of the nation’s 59 prior presidential elections have been choices between mediocrities, with some scoundrels thrown in (and into office). This year’s choice is, however, the worst ever.

You have to give people a reason to believe that, under your leadership, America will be better. Rick Santorum has done that.

You've got to find a difierent approach. You've got to create some interest in your language, in the words and pictures you create. If a candidate can't give a 10-minute speech and have reporters reaching for their pens in the first 90 seconds, he probably shouldn't be running.

And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obamas way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?

We need candidates who are able to reach out to young voters, women voters.

Being a little older is not going to win election. Being a little younger might, especially if the older candidates, Hillary Clinton included, can't make the case that they have learned something that the younger crowd doesn't know.

Hillary Clinton is also not a very exciting, inspiring candidate to a lot of the left-leaning Democratic base, especially in Iowa.

Dogs are great assets to candidates, and the feeling seems to be engendered that if a dog loves the candidate, he can't be all that bad.

There's always that tension between policy and personality in politics, and as voters, we have that, too: we all vote on issues, but we also vote on whether we like the people who are put forward.