Donald
Trump's polling slump appears to have arrived
Philip
Bump
The pattern in 2016
polling has been an unusual one. Hillary Clinton gets a big lead;
Donald Trump closes the gap. We seem to be entering the fourth such
cycle, leaving the obvious question: Where will we be on 8 November?
New national polling
from CNN-ORC shows a wide swing toward Clinton over the past month.
In early September, she trailed Trump by one point in the same poll —
polling that was ahead of the trend showing the race narrowing. The
new poll has Clinton up by five points, a six-point swing that seems
to be in large part a function of her strong debate performance.
Clinton was trailing
with men by 20 points; now she trails by four. She was trailing with
independents, she now leads. For the past week or two, the national
race has been fairly static, with Clinton enjoying about a
three-point lead. (The RealClearPolitics average hasn't yet included
the new CNN numbers.)
The uptick from CNN
is what we'd expect to see based on the extent to which people said
she won the debate. (Gallup pegged it as the third-biggest win in
modern history.) But national polls don't win elections; state
results do. So let's consider those, walking through the electoral
college math.
Let's start by
giving Trump three states that Mitt Romney lost in 2012: Nevada, Iowa
and New Hampshire. Let's assume that nothing else changes since then
and that Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and Pennsylvania are
all too-close-to-call. That means Trump needs 63 electoral votes from
those five states and Clinton needs 30. If we give Trump all of those
states except Florida, he adds 62 electoral votes — meaning he hits
269 in total. Or, to simplify yet again: If Trump loses Florida, in
this scenario, the best he can hope for is a tie.
A slew of new swing
state polls came out Monday in the five states above, reinforcing the
idea that Clinton's big win in the first presidential debate may have
moved the contest in those states to her favor. Quinnipiac University
dropped polls in Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida, with
Clinton leading in Florida and seeing a dramatic five-point swing in
that state since the last poll, in early September. Monmouth
University polled in Colorado, with Clinton holding a double-digit
lead in that state.
Since the debate,
the RealClearPolitics polling averages in four of the five states
have moved to Clinton, to varying degrees. After the conventions, we
saw bigger swings toward Clinton — though over the course of
several weeks.
Again, it's the blue
line on that chart that's most important to the final outcome.
Clinton's lead in Florida is now bigger than her leads in Ohio or
Colorado (in the polling average), which is pretty remarkable. Since
Quinnipiac University's September poll, Clinton has closed the gap
with Trump among men in the state by nine points while maintaining a
sizable lead with women. She has gained seven points among white
voters with a college degree, the swing group in the swing states.
In Ohio, though,
Clinton's position has worsened. She and Trump were tied last month,
but she now trails by five points, with Trump widening the gap among
men by seven points and seeing his lead with independents jump from
five to 19 points. You've heard it said 100 times, but no Republican
has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. (Why might Trump
do so well in Ohio? Read this.) Winning Ohio, though, isn't enough to
ensure victory this year.
The bigger question
for Trump is how and if he can actually pass Clinton. In the
RealClearPolitics average, Trump has led Clinton for only eight days
this year. There have been three days this year that Trump's polling
average has been above 45 percent compared with 196 days this year
that Clinton has topped that mark. Trump often disparages talk about
his having a ceiling, pointing to similar arguments in the primary.
But in the general, he hasn't been able to manage a polling average
of 46 percent in the head-to-head contest even once. In recent weeks,
he has crept upward — but now Clinton's creeping along ahead of
him.
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The CNN-ORC poll
reminds us why. Only a third of voters think Trump has the
temperament to serve as president vs. Clinton. Voters see her as a
stronger leader and better able to handle the job. Only a third say
Trump is better prepared to handle the presidency. All of this, mind
you, before the weekend revelations about Trump's taxes.
For Clinton, the
question is the same one it has been for months: What does she have
to do to put this race away? And the answer is the same, too: It
seems as though she can't. She has a lead nationally and in the
states that matter. And with 36 days to go, that's a much better
position to be in than trailing in both.
Copyright:
Washington Post
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