Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pulled into an effective tie with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, erasing a substantial deficit as he consolidated support among his party’s likely voters in recent weeks, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released Friday.
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Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster polled 736 registered voters last week and found Clinton leading Trump, 47 to 40 percent among 496 likely voters, a considerable drop from her 49 to 38 percent lead in F&M’s July poll in the wake of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
The poll showed 40 percent of likely voters supporting Trump and 39 percent backing Clinton for the week of August 26 to September 1.
Clinton’s high of 44 percent in early August just after the Democratic National Convention has disappeared, leaving her with the lowest level of support since the middle of July. Voters may dislike Clinton a bit less than they dislike Trump, but they aren’t about to give her a mandate in the form of Democrat control of Congress.
In a four-way ballot, Clinton still leads Trump by 7 points (42 percent to 35 percent), while Johnson is favored by 9 percent and Stein by 4 percent of voters. It highlights, however, that this remains a very close race.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said he remains convinced Clinton is ahead, somewhere in the range seen among the polling aggregators.
In a separate question in the Reuters/Ipsos poll that included alternative-party candidates, Clinton and Trump were tied at 39 percent.
Seventy-year-old Trump is a real estate billionaire from NY and a realty television star who joined politics only about a year ago. Clinton has 73 percent of the Democratic vote, down from 79 percent in the previous survey. [Jill] Stein earns 6% of the vote among unaffiliateds. The margin is even tighter, 45 to 42 percent, among likely voters, and that appears to be with in the poll’s margin of error – plus or minus 5 points for the likely voters.
The survey showed both candidates’ appeal to various demographic groups. A little more than half of participants felt their access would remain the same under Clinton, while only 37% felt there wouldn’t be much difference if Trump were president.
On the other hand, Trump’s suffering continues in terms of funds. But voters still don’t expect big changes if Clinton wins in November.
Most voters believe the media, not the candidates, are driving the agenda this election season.
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A majority of all voters think both of the major presidential candidates are liars and give them equally low marks as potential used vehicle salesmen.
