More bad news for Republicans who fear the Trumpublican Party may not play well beyond those who’ve swarmed to vote for billionaire showman Donald Trump: a new poll finds that all-but-certain Democratic Party 2016 Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would trounce Trump in Florida’s vital Miami- Dade area. The poll shows one fifth of Clinton’s support is coming from GOP voters and that Trump is ahead with Cuban Americans…but not by much. Given Florida’s status as a vital state to win, this is (more) bad news for Republicans who feel Trump could lose more voters than the millions he says he is attracting in a general election:
Hillary Clinton is so much more popular than Donald Trump among Miami-Dade County voters that even a significant number of
Republicans support her in the likely presidential match-up, a new local poll has found.
Clinton leads Trump by a whopping 52-25 percent, with 23 percent of respondents undecided, according to the poll by Bendixen & Amandi International for the Miami Herald, el Nuevo Herald, WLRN and Univision 23.
One-fifth of Republicans said they back Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has yet to garner a GOP majority, with 48 percent of Republicans saying they’d back him and nearly a third undecided.“This should be an early sign of potential concern and worry for the Trump campaign,” said pollster Fernand Amandi, a Democrat who is not working for any presidential campaign. “If she gets 20 percent of Republican voters statewide, it’s going to be a very early night on Nov. 8.”
And this poll is showing what is emerging as a trend: some Republicans who say although they would not vote for Clinton, there’s no way they’ll vote for Trump:
Several prominent local Republicans have said they can’t back Trump, although they also won’t vote for Clinton.
Clinton pulls support from 79 percent of Democrats, with only 6 percent of them backing Trump and 15 percent undecided. Among voters without party affiliation, the Clinton-Trump split is 49-28 percent, with 23 percent undecided. Clinton leads among every age group — especially among younger voters — and among both men and women — especially among women.
Some of her support comes from voters less interested in supporting Clinton and more interested in opposing Trump.
Add to this Trump’s statistical tie with Clinton in normally reliably Republican Georgia, and the GOP will have a bit of extra work to do in 2016.
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.