Sunday, June 26, 2016

Clinton Leads Trump 46 to 41 Percent in New WSJ/NBC News Poll

To gather from all the buzz at Memeorandum, you'd think Hillary Clinton had pulled out an insurmountable double-digit lead in the wake of Donald Trump's "horrible" couple of weeks following the Curiel comments and Orlando.

That's because WaPo has a sensational new poll out with Clinton expanding her lead over the bombastic Manhattan mogul, 51-39 percent. See Politico for the summary, "Clinton surges to 12-point lead in WaPo poll":
Hillary Clinton currently holds a double-digit lead over Donald Trump nationally, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday.

If the election were held today, 51 percent of respondents said they would vote for Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and 39 percent said they would vote for Trump...
There's clearly something wrong with the poll, and without digging through the internals (the folks at Hot Air usually do quite a thorough job of that), I'll bet they oversampled Democrats.

The fact is, there's been little change in the underlying structure of the horse race. If anything, Donald Trump's probably about tied with Clinton, since on the issues of immigration and the corrupt political class, the Brexit revolt in Britain tells us a whole lot about the electoral environment Clinton and the Democrats are facing. (An interesting hypothesis is whether there was some kind of Bradley Effect in the British voting. Recall with the Bradley Effect voters hide their true preferences from pollsters, to conceal more racialist sentiments and avoid the potential appearance of "bigotry").

At any rate, see WSJ, "Donald Trump Weathers Stormy Month, Loses Only 2 Points Versus Hillary Clinton":
Republican Donald Trump emerged relatively unscathed from one of the rockiest phases of his campaign, lagging rival Hillary Clinton by 5 percentage points but essentially tied when third-party candidates are included, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The survey of 1,000 registered voters showed Mrs. Clinton leading 46% to 41% in a head-to-head matchup. Mrs. Clinton’s number held steady over the past month, while Mr. Trump’s standing dropped by 2 points since May. The survey was conducted June 19-23, a period of tumult within his campaign.

Mr. Trump over the past week fired his campaign manager and faced criticism from within his own party over weak fundraising numbers and lack of organization. Earlier in the month, he was the target of bipartisan ire for his focus on a federal judge’s ethnicity and his reaction to the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla.

“Donald Trump has had the worst month one can imagine, but Clinton’s negatives are so high the net impact on the ballot is almost invisible,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Fred Yang.
In a worrying sign for the former secretary of state, her advantage largely vanished when voters also get a choice of third-party candidates.

Mrs. Clinton’s lead fell to one point, at 39% to Mr. Trump’s 38%, when Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are part of the mix. With both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump saddled with low approval ratings, voters seem to be looking for alternatives. Together, Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein were the choice of 16% of those who took part in the survey.

A spokesman for Mr. Johnson said the Libertarian ticket expects to be on the ballot in all 50 states. A Green Party spokesman said the party expects to do at least as well as 2012, when Ms. Stein was on the ballot in 37 states.
Still more.

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