Reply #10: The biggest reason for this, from this poll results, is that Democratic party members

[pschoeb]

Seem to trust Republican candidates more than Republican Party members trust Democratic candidates

If you look at the poll results broken down by party
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=28252

you'll notice that Republicans trust Giuliani(75%) and McCain(67%) less than Democratic Party members trust Obama(78%) and Clinton(80%). But unfortunately Democratic Party members have a much higher trust in Giuliani(41%) and McCain(47%) than Republicans have for Obama(28%) and Clinton(15%). Independents are fairly equal in regards to all 4 of these candidates. I would say that Democratic Party people tend to err on the side of kindness in polls, and Republicans tend err on the side of vindictiveness. Therefore if you look at the "a fair amount" answers for Republicans candidates, my guess is that many of these were Democratic Party people, who answered "a great deal" towards the Democratic candidates. Whereas the Republicans tended to vote "almost none" when they answered about Democratic candidates, when they voted "a great deal" for their own. The upshot is that Democratic Party people who voted "a great deal" to Democratic Party candidates, but voted "a fair amount" for some Republicans, aren't going to vote for Republicans on this point. When you compare against their own parties trust Clinton(80%) and Obama(78%), beat Giuliani(75%) and McCain(67%). So Republicans who trust Obama and Clinton are more likely to vote for them in the General, than Democratic members who voted that they trust McCain and Giuliani.