Mickey Blum

Doug Schoen, the noted pollster who crunched numbers for Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in the mid 1990's, and for Michael Bloomberg’s 2001 mayoral race, said last night that he doesn’t think Bloomberg will run for president.

Schoen, speaking at a forum about presidential polling at Baruch College, was answering a question from an audience member who wanted to know which of the two major parties would be most affected by a Bloomberg presidential run.

“Let me just say at the outset I don’t think he is going to run,” Schoen said. “Largely Phil’s question is an academic one. It was very interesting to me that at this point, he appears to be hurting the Republicans at least as much if not more than the Democrats. I think the reason for that has more to do with disaffected Republicans who probably don’t want to vote, at this point, for Hillary Clinton--who hear, you know, Independent Michael Bloomberg, don’t know much about who Michael Bloomberg is, and are saying, ‘You know what, we don’t want to vote Republican, and this is an alternative.”

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