From VOA Learning English, welcome back to AS IT IS. I’m your host Mario Ritter.

The lifeblood of Washington is politics. So it is never too early to consider the next presidential election. A recent public-opinion survey found that there is no clear favorite among possible presidential candidates for the Republican Party in 2016. VOA’s Jim Malone gives us a look at the strongest candidates at this time, but first, more about the survey’s findings.

The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute organized the study. Quinnipiac’s Peter Brown has been looking at some of the possible Republican candidates. He says the party’s presidential nomination appears wide open at this time.

“What we found is that there is no real front-runner for the republican nomination. There are a number of possible candidates, five actually, who got between 10 and 19 percent of the vote.”

President Obama is limited to two terms in office. That means it is not known who the Republican candidate would face in the 2016 election.

The study found that Florida Senator Marco Rubio is leading the Republican presidential hopeful. He received 19-percent support in the survey. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan followed with 17 percent. Mr. Ryan recently was defeated for vice president when former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney lost the presidency to Mr. Obama. Other possible candidates in the next election were Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Peter Brown says most Republican voters are looking for a winner in 2016 after losing the past two presidential elections.

Most of the presidential hopefuls in both parties are not likely to announce their plans about 2016 until after congressional elections next year.

Allan Lichtman is a political expert at American University in Washington. He says Republicans are working to keep their majority in the House of Representatives in those elections. He believes that Americans are more likely to support the Democratic Party than the Republicans.

“Right now their party brand is very, very poor. Very few people approve of the Republican Party. And they need to do something about it other than just hang on with their fingernails to some of these districts within Congress.”

Peter Brown says Quinnipiac plans to release a new survey next month. He says it will examine the possible candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

“On the Democratic side, there is a question as to whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will run. We have not polled on it yet. But we have in some states, and she does very well.”

Another study done in January found that 67 percent of those asked had a favorable opinion of Ms. Clinton.

Now VOA Political Correspondent Jim Malone tells us about the possible Republican candidates.

Two main competitors are Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan recently ran unsuccessfully for vice president with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Jeri Watson spoke with VOA’s Jim Malone.”

“The poll says there isn’t a front-runner for the nomination right now. But Marco Rubio received 19 percent support in that poll. I wonder if you could tell us, who is Marco Rubio?”

“Marco Rubio is an up-and-coming senator from Florida who is getting a lot of attention as a young Hispanic man who has potential appeal to voters, to constituencies that Republicans have had trouble appealing to in recent years.

Rubio comes from a Cuban American background. He won his Senate seat a few years ago in Florida with help from the conservative Tea Party movement. So, he potentially has broad appeal. He has appeal to conservatives in the Republican Party which is still the most important group in that party.

But also he could have appeal to moderate Hispanic voters who see him as a role model and potentially even to some moderate swing voters we call them people who tend to jump back and forth between one party or the other.

So Rubio offers a measure of hope for the Republican Party and they need some hope. They had a rough 2012 election and they need a new generation of politicians to step up, and I think a lot of Republicans are going to take a hard look at Marco Rubio, among others.

But it’s still very early as we look ahead to 2016. So we don’t want to get too carried away.”

“Representative Paul Ryan was the closest opponent for support in that Quinnipiac Poll. Could you tell us a little bit about him?”

“Well, Paul Ryan is, in a sense, another character in this drama of a new generation of Republican lawmakers coming into the national spotlight. Paul Ryan is considered a very smart, savvy on the budget issues which are a major point of confrontation in Washington in recent years.

He’s considered sort of the conservative conscience of the Republican Party in terms of how the government should spend money, how it should go about taxing people, that kind of issue. And he did get his turn in the spotlight when he was Mitt Romney’s running mate.

Often the vice presidential selection on a losing ticket, that person is often seen as a very viable contender four years down the road for the next round of presidential nomination battles. We will see if that’s the case with Paul Ryan.

I think he has his supporters within the Republican Party. Whether or not he has a strong enough personality and sort of a tendency to be a leader are some of the questions that we don’t know yet.

Look, the Republicans will be looking for strong personalities, a new generation of leadership in 2016. What we saw with Mitt Romney, and four years before that with John McCain, the two previous nominees, they were considered part of the Republican Establishment.

And although they made peace with the more conservative elements of the party like the Tea Party movement, they weren’t real favorites of hardline conservatives who actually drive the Republican Party.

So Ryan and Marco Rubio and the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will all be in the mix for 2016, as will Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has a lot of support among Tea Party supporters.

So it’s a real new cast of characters for the Republican Party, far different I would point out than the Democratic side where he have some very veteran well-known figures who are getting most of the attention right now. And I’m talking about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. No one has said by the way that they’re actually running. But these are the names that people are focused on right now.”

That was Jeri Watson speaking with Jim Malone.