A new poll erases any doubt that billionaire Donald Trump is now a serious candidate: it shows him beating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a face-to-face match-up:
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump leads Democrat Hillary Clinton head-to-head, according to a new poll released Friday.
The poll by SurveyUSA finds that matched up directly, Trump garners 45 percent to Clinton’s 40 percent.
In other head-to-head matchups, Trump beats out Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by 44 percent to 40 percent; Vice President Joe Biden by 44 percent to 42 percent; and former Vice President Al Gore by 44 percent to 41 percent.
Trump’s surge past Clinton marks a dramatic turnaround in the polls.
A CNN/ORC sampling of national voters in late June — just days after Trump entered the race — found that 59 percent supported Clinton to 34 percent picking Trump in a head-to-head race.
The same poll taken in July saw Clinton at 57 percent to Trump at 38 percent. And a version taken in August had Clinton with 52 percent support and Trump with 43 percent.
Trump has seen his campaign’s popularity surge through the summer while Clinton’s has struggled with voter concerns over her transparency and trustworthiness as secretary of State.
The poll also found that 30 percent of respondents believe Trump will eventually be the Republican nominee, leading the field.
I’ve noted repeatedly on TMV since the site started in 2003 that partisans will often start blasting the methodology of a poll they like, and tout to the mountaintops the ones they like. But bottom line is you can’t judge by one single poll but by a combination of polls.
This poll taken at this moment in time is further proof that people who simply say “Trump can never get the nomination” or “Trump can’t win” are making assumptions. And you know the old saying “an assumption makes an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me.'”
There are lot of pundits who are starting to look like they’re in hee-haw status and their self-assured predictions are starting to sound like braying.
The news here is that Trump continues to grow in the polls and seems Teflon, while Hillary Clinton has undergone some slippage. No, she’s not yet Velcro. But she has some ground to regain and there are reports she plans to move on several fronts to do just that. Meanwhile, Trump continues to make the conventional wisdom seem like anything but wisdom.
This is just one poll. The question now is: will other polls begin to reflect the same Trump national strength against Democrats?
One poll does not a trend make but it can give pause.
SOME OTHER VIEWS:
–-Washington Monthly:
While a single outlier poll is no reason for alarm and the average of polls shows Clinton ahead of the field, the latest SurveyUSA poll showing Donald Trump winning a head-to-head matchup with Clinton should be a little troubling.
There is a lot of clamor among Clinton supporters that there is a media conspiracy to destroy her. It’s certainly true that most of the media doesn’t like Clinton, but it’s also true that the Clinton campaign hasn’t exactly been doing much to generate positive press. Clinton has mostly been in a quiet defensive crouch, assuming that the “silly season” of August and September would pass mostly by without incident as she blanketed the airwaves in Iowa, and that her aura of inevitability and high public approval ratings would carry the day.
I’ve made a mistake. I hate to admit that, but it’s true.
While I’ve spent the past few weeks criticizing Donald Trump as an incompetent jackass and his supporters as ignorant racists… I’ve also been kind of treating the whole thing as a side issue. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, because I never thought a guy who was proudly contemptuous of women and minorities stood a real chance of getting elected.
The new SurveyUSA poll proves me wrong. Evidently Trump is now leading in general election match-ups against the possible Democratic contenders. Boy, is the egg on my face.
I thought at some point a guy getting endorsements from people in the white supremacist community, or demonstrating he was completely ignorant of foreign affairs, or even lobbing junior high-school insults at female critics, would disqualify him. I figured I knew how low our standards as a nation would go. I was mistaken there.
Huh. A real head-scratcher.
Donald Trump might be the favorite among Republican voters, I reasoned… but it’s not like he’d start to show popularity among the whole of the American public. We’re a screwed up nation – but not that screwed up, right? That’s what I believed anyway. But I was totally wrong.
Establishment Republicans have been wringing their hands for months about what to do about Donald Trump. They alternate between despair and hope. Despair that the longer Trump remains atop the GOP field, the crazier the party appears to the public. Hope that, eventually, Trump will melt down and destroy himself, clearing the way for a more establishment candidate like Jeb Bush or Scott Walker.
Their major argument is “Trump as GOP nominee can’t win the general election against Hillary Clinton.” And previous polls seem to bear that out. Quinnipiac had Trump trailing Clinton 45-41 while the Democrat-leaning pollster PPP had Clinton ahead 46-44.
Now, a new poll from the respected SurveyUSA shows Donald Trump beating every Democratic candidate in the general election — including Hillary Clinton.
As we start looking ahead to 2016, it’s important to keep these Electoral College issues in mind as we look at the state of the race. Political pundits, bloggers and cable news networks have breathlessly reported the release of each new head-to-head poll between Hillary Clinton and her potential Republican rivals, including a new poll that purports to show Hillary Clinton trailing Donald Trump. However, these polls are essentially meaningless at this point in time. For one thing, we’re still fifteen months away from the General Election, and ten months from the time when the General Election campaign effectively begins with the conclusion of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. There is simply too much that can happen between now and then that will affect the election for any polling to be reliable. At this point during the 2012 cycle, President Obama was seemingly in trouble in Virginia where he had won in 2008, and losing to a “Generic Republican” candidate in a head-to-head matchup. In addition to the problems with head-to-head polling at this point in the election, the fact that Presidential election are decided at the state level rather than nationally means that the polling really misses what the race is about. It is admittedly rare that a candidate will win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote, but it has happened before and could happen again. At the very least, though, it means that head-to-head polling, especially this early in the race, is not a good predictor of how an election will turn out.
I do believe that Trump is no longer the most beatable candidate in the Republican race. If you look at the Real Clear Politics general-election matchups against Clinton, it’s clear that Trump has caught up with (or surpassed) the other Republicans in electability. Clinton still beats all of them, but the margins, for the most part, are narrowing.
SurveyUSA says that Trump beats Clinton in part because of a massive gender gap (20 points). That would seem to jibe with the recent surge in approval of Trump among Republicans — Gallup says Trump’s improved numbers since mid-July are entirely the result of greater popularity among Republican men. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Democratic men are also feeling hormonal surges as they watch Trump.
I very much believe that Trump could win a general election in this country at this time. I think Democrats are much more vulnerable than many people believe, and I think Hillary Clinton is quite vulnerable. But I don’t believe this poll.
I know many Republicas are not haoppy abouty Trump, because they believe the illegal immigrant/gay marriage/ legal pot constituency is very important to winning elections, but this survey suggests that if you want to beat the Democrats, you need Trump
The RNC and the DNC in combination with the entire legacy media complex are facing a paradigm shift in their traditional ability to influence election outcomes. They have tried to ridicule Trump, and it hasn’t worked. They’ve tried to isolate Trump by dividing the electorate, it hasn’t worked. They’ve tried to marginalize Trump by dismissing his campaign validity – again, it hasn’t worked.
This in-your-face reality presents a serious problem for the media and professional political parties. With this much visible support -and it just keeps growing- how does the media and the professional political apparatus stop Trump from victory?
For the professional political class the entire risk/reward dynamic is now fraught with additional variables. If they continue to attack Trump they run the risk of making themselves even more visibly irrelevant – ergo each continued attack becomes even less impactful. Yet, if they don’t attack Trump their very existence is at risk…..
How will they possibly find a solution?
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.