Hillary Clinton holds a solid 6-point lead over Donald Trump heading into the first presidential debate next Monday, according to a new national poll released Friday.
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Both Trump and Clinton are widely disliked by majorities of registered voters, but negative feelings about Trump outpace those for Clinton, 61 percent to 56 percent. Democrat Hillary Clinton is heavily outspending her Republican rival, Donald Trump, on TV advertising in swing states; Trump prefers to stage mass rallies in them. The margin of sampling error is 3 percent. He said Trump made things too personal when he called him “Lyin’ Ted”, insulted Cruz’s wife Heidi and repeated discredited accusations linking Cruz’s Cuba-born father to the John F. Kennedy assassination.
“Iowa, with a voting bloc that is overwhelmingly white, lacks the kind of large minority population that has fueled Hillary Clinton’s lead in some of the large industrial states”.
Among Independents who are likely to vote, Clinton edges out Trump with 40 percent compared to Trump’s 38 percent of likely votes. Jill Stein has taken two percent of the vote while Johnson has six. The Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll gathers responses every day and reports results twice a week, so it often detects trends in sentiment before most other polls.
Trump has a slight edge on the question of who is “honest and trustworthy”, as 44% of likely voters think he is, while 36% think that Clinton is.
It is the campaign’s hope that Ms Clinton can knock Mr Trump off balance and get under his skin, challenging his worth and pouncing on him when he tells a lie.
It also found that eight percent of likely voters say they don’t support either candidate while one percent say they are for someone else.
“I don’t really like Clinton or Trump, I think they both have character issues”, said Tom Murphy, a 59-year-old Latino from Phoenix who is backing the Libertarian Gary Johnson as a protest vote.
Then he answered his own question: “They say she’s practicing for the debate”. Clinton is up as much as 9 points in Pennsylvania (Morning Call). “She is in this for the right reasons”.
The ad concluded with a video clip from an older interview which shows Trump admitting, “I can’t say that” when asked if he treats women with respect.
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The McClatchy poll began September 15, and continued through September 20, and included 758 likely voters through cell phones and landlines.
