The 2016 Presidential race is tightening — with Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump ahead in one major poll:
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton start the race to November 8 on essentially even ground, with Trump edging Clinton by a scant two points among likely voters, and the contest sparking sharp divisions along demographic lines in a new CNN/ORC Poll.
Trump tops Clinton 45% to 43% in the new survey, with Libertarian Gary Johnson standing at 7% among likely voters in this poll and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at just 2%.
The topsy-turvy campaign for the presidency has seen both Clinton and Trump holding a significant lead at some point in the last two months, though Clinton has topped Trump more often than not. Most recently, Clinton’s convention propelled her to an 8-point lead among registered voters in an early-August CNN/ORC Poll. Clinton’s lead has largely evaporated despite a challenging month for Trump, which saw an overhaul of his campaign staff, announcements of support for Clinton from several high-profile Republicans and criticism of his campaign strategy. But most voters say they still expect to see Clinton prevail in November, and 59% think she will be the one to get to 270 electoral votes vs. 34% who think Trump has the better shot at winning.
Neither major third party candidate appears to be making the gains necessary to reach the 15% threshold set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, with just three weeks to go before the first debate on September 26.
The new poll finds the two major party candidates provoke large gaps by gender, age, race, education and partisanship. Among those likely to turn out in the fall, both candidates have secured about the same share of their own partisans (92% of Democrats back Clinton, 90% of Republicans are behind Trump) but independents give Trump an edge, 49% say they’d vote for him while just 29% of independent voters back Clinton. Another 16% back Johnson, 6% Stein.Women break for Clinton (53% to 38%) while men shift Trump’s way (54% to 32%). Among women, those who are unmarried make up the core of her support, 73% of unmarried women back Clinton compared with just 36% of married women. Among men, no such marriage gap emerges, as both unmarried and married men favor Trump.
Younger voters are in Clinton’s corner (54% to 29% among those under age 45) while the older ones are more apt to back Trump (54% to 39% among those age 45 or older). Whites mostly support Trump (55% to 34%), while non-whites favor Clinton by a nearly 4-to-1 margin (71% to 18%). Most college grads back Clinton while those without degrees mostly support Trump, and that divide deepens among white voters. Whites who do not hold college degrees support Trump by an almost 3-to-1 margin (68% to 24%) while whites who do have college degrees split 49% for Clinton to 36% for Trump and 11% for Johnson.
Support for Johnson seems to be concentrated among groups where Clinton could stand to benefit from consolidating voters. Although direct comparison between the poll’s two-way, head-to-head matchup and its four-way matchup doesn’t suggest that Johnson is pulling disproportionately from either candidate, his supporters come mostly among groups where a strong third-party bid could harm Clinton’s standing: Younger voters (particularly younger men), whites with college degrees, and independents, notably.
Could be headed to another year such as 2000 when some Democrats felt there was little difference between the two major parties, voted for Ralph Nader and spent the next 8 years bitterly complaining about the Republican President George Bush? (It turned out there was more than a tad of difference between a Bush administration and what would have been a Gore administration) Most analysts aren’t yet saying it has reached that point, particularly because the Republican Presidential campaign’s ground game is at this point light years behind the Democrats’.
Meanwhile, another poll shows Clinton still leading:
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has a 6-point lead over Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll.
Clinton is favored by 48 percent of registered voters, while Trump is backed by 42 percent.
In a four-way matchup including Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Clinton has a 4-point lead over Trump, 41 percent to 37 percent. Johnson has 12 percent support, and Stein is favored by 4 percent of registered voters.Clinton has an advantage over Trump in the Northeast and West, pollsters found. Clinton and Trump are tied in the Midwest, and Trump has a 1-point lead in the South.
And the bigger picture beyond the see-saw poll numbers? Politico notes that Trump may have reached his ceiling:
Donald Trump has run head-first into an electoral wall.
In poll after poll, Trump isn’t even close to winning a majority of the vote. While he’s narrowed the gap between his campaign and Hillary Clinton in recent weeks, in the past 21 national polls conducted using conventional phone or internet methodologies over the last five weeks, Trump’s high-water mark in a head-to-head matchup with Clinton is 44 percent.
And when third-party candidates — Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein — are included, Trump’s highest poll score is only 40 percent, well below Clinton’s high of 50 percent.
The GOP presidential nominee’s limited support isn’t necessarily prohibitive for his chances — especially if Johnson and Stein continue to draw, combined, more than 10 percent of the vote. He only trails Clinton by 4 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average and by 5 points in the HuffPost Pollster model. But if support for the third-party candidates dwindles closer to Election Day, Trump’s inability to expand his base could tilt the race further toward Clinton or require him to find a way to win with only a plurality of the vote, rather than a majority.
The national polls are striking, even with Trump drawing closer to Clinton in recent weeks. Of the 21 surveys that tested just Trump and Clinton, the Republican failed to break 40 percent four times. In most of the polls — 12 out of 21 — Trump was at either 41 or 42 percent.
Only two polls showed Trump hitting 44 percent: a Bloomberg News phone poll in early August that had Clinton leading by 6 points, and an Economist-YouGov web survey later in the month that showed Clinton ahead by 3 points.Clinton, meanwhile, earned 50 percent or greater in 6 of the 21 polls.
The numbers aren’t much better for Trump in the four-way matchups with Johnson and Stein. In those 28 polls conducted since the beginning of August, Trump only hit the 40-percent mark four times — three of them automated-phone surveys from Rasmussen Reports, which has a consistent and heavy Republican lean.
Here’s The Pollster’s graph of poll averages in a two way race:
Here’s The Pollster’s graph of poll averages in a four way race:
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.