Polls have shown the Republican Party start to unify around billionaire Donald Trump as its 2016 Presidential nominee — and a new Fox News poll shows Trump pulling into the lead against all-but-certain Democratic Presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The poll finds that most members of both parties consider each of them people who’d say anything to get elected. And if Clinton indeed leads among women, Trump leads among men and, in this poll, independent voters:
Donald Trump tops Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, according to a new Fox News Poll that also finds majorities of voters feel both frontrunners lack strong moral values and will say anything to get elected.
Trump has a 45-42 percent edge over Clinton, if the presidential election were held today. That’s within the poll’s margin of sampling error. Last month, Clinton was up by 48-41 percent (April 2016).
Clinton has a commanding 83-point lead among blacks (90-7 percent), and is up by 39 among Hispanics (62-23 percent).
But her numbers among blacks and Hispanics don’t match President Barack Obama’s numbers in 2012:In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won by 20 points among whites, while President Barack Obama won blacks by 87 points and Hispanics by 44, according to the Fox News exit poll.
One reason for Trump’s showing is there is parity on party unity, as 83 percent of Democrats back Clinton and 82 percent of Republicans support Trump.
Independents go for Trump by 46-30 percent, although one in five would vote for someone else or stay home (20 percent).
Enthusiasm is on the GOP’s side, as more Republicans (74 percent) than Democrats (66 percent) say they are extremely or very interested in the presidential election.
And Bernie Sanders supporters? The poll backs up Sander’s contention that he could beat Trump, And despite the talking points from DNC and other Democratic officials about how in the end Sanders supporters will support the Democrats, enough of them won’t so combined with some of Clinton’s other vulnerable areas, it could indeed matter:
The poll shows Bernie Sanders has a 46-42 percent advantage over Trump in a hypothetical matchup. Sanders was up by 53-39 percent in April. However, the Vermont senator trails Clinton in the Democratic nomination race by what is considered an insurmountable number of delegates.
The drawn-out nomination battle may hurt Clinton among the base, as 1 in 10 Sanders voters say they would pick Trump over her in November (11 percent).
There’s more in this poll analyzing the two candidates. However, the poll should be good news for the RNC, bad news for the Never Trump movement, good news for those who support Trump and who’ve argued he could win and that polls showing him lagging could change, bad news for new and old media pundits who keep insisting Trump could never win (Nate Silver has already admitted extensively that he was wrong in a piece titled “How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump”), and bad news for Clinton and the DNC. Meanwhile, as the GOP starts to unify around Trump, the war within the Democratic Party gets nastier — and more violent.
Just as the GOP isn’t going to nominate the person who polls could do best against Clinton, this poll suggests the Democrats are poised not to nominate the person who’d do best against Trump. Some analysts suggest the polling numbers don’t take into account how the GOP would go after Sanders if he got the nomination. But these are the numbers — not good ones for Clinton and the DNC.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.