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Trump’s Lead Widens After Republican National Convention, CNN/ORC Poll Finds

In a four-way contest with two other presidential candidates from minor parties, Trump is leading Clinton by five percentage points. Meanwhile a new Morning Consult survey shows Trump leading Clinton by a 44-40 percent spread – with Johnson getting 10 percent of the vote. Forty-one percent of independents said the confab turned them off to Trump. This marks Trump’s first RCP lead since May.

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Despite the six-percent post-convention increase in the head-to-head polling, 44 percent of 882 registered voters say they are less likely to vote for Trump after seeing or reading about Donald Trump at the convention. After the convention, 46% of voters said they would be supporting Trump, 28% Clinton, 15% Johnson and 4% Stein. It asked, if the presidential election were held today, would the person be more likely to vote for Trump and Mike Pence or Clinton and Tim Kaine?

A CBS News poll also found that Trump’s polling bounced back after the convention.

No Republican presidential nominee since President George W. Bush in 2000 has seen a post-convention surge in CNN polls as big as Trump’s. Six percent of respondents who favored Clinton, say they could change their mind, while 7 percent who favored Trump say they could change their mind.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook downplayed the CNN/ORC Poll Friday, which gives Trump an edge coming out of the Republican convention. Still, 40% called the speech excellent or good and about half of voters (45%) said Trump’s speech reflected the way they feel about things in the US today; 48% said it did not reflect their views.

Nonetheless, Trump got a post-convention “bump” – the first time that’s happened in American politics in more than a decade-and-a-half.

The poll was conducted by telephone from July 22 to July 24 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, and its results have a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. And most came away feeling ready to decide about Trump’s fitness for the job: 78% say they already know enough to know whether he’d be a good president.

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The CNN/ORC poll was taken after the conclusion of last week’s “Republican” national convention in Cleveland – which wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for “The Donald”. But the poll suggests a large share of Republican voters still need to be won over.

If he believes Trump unfit, why would Cruz endorse him?