As he continues to call the very legitimacy of America’s electoral process into question, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump continues to sink in the polls. A new CBS poll finds him going south with numbers in the high thirties:
Following the second presidential debate and controversies surrounding both campaigns, Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump has expanded to nine points now nationally. Forty-seven percent of likely voters support or lean towards Clinton, while 38 percent support Trump. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gets 8 percent of likely voters, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein receives 3 percent of the vote. Two weeks ago, Clinton’s lead was four points.
In a two-way match-up where third party candidates are not named explicitly, Clinton leads Trump 51 percent to 40 percent among likely voters, including leaners.
A key to his erosion in support? Among other things, he’s losing the support of Republicans, a further indication that there are indeed thoughtful Republicans who’ve decided there is a limit to partisan loyalty:
Trump has lost some support among members of his own party. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans support him now, down from 84 percent before the Access Hollywood tape and allegations of sexually aggressive behavior surfaced.
And Clinton now seems poised to set a record in the number of votes from women.
Hillary Clinton opened up a wide lead among women voters after the first presidential debate and she continues to get strong support from that group, leading Trump by 19 points among them. If this advantage holds on Election Day, it would be the largest margin for a Democrat among women going back to 1972 when exit polls were first conducted. Trump has lost some ground with men and older voters. He now has just a two-point edge among men; he led by 11 points earlier this month.
Trump leads with white voters overall, including white men, but the race is close among white women. Republican Mitt Romney won white women by 14 points in 2012, according to exit polls.
Trump continues to struggle with black voters, more than eight in 10 of whom are voting for Clinton.
Whites without a college degree remain some of Trump’s strongest backers – he leads Clinton by 19 points among them – while Clinton is ahead of Trump among white voters with a college degree.
When his polls go down, Trump tends to lash out. He has been lashing out with ferocity lately; expect him to get even more fierce and to emphasis even more his claim that the election is rigged against him — a claim mainstream Republicans flatly reject.
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.