Polls: Trump takes lead over Clinton after convention bounce
Tribune News Service
PHILADELPHIA — The Republican convention generated a modest increase in Donald Trump’s poll standing, moving the New York businessman back into a lead over Hillary Clinton.
Through Sunday, the University of Southern California Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak tracking poll of the race shows Mr. Trump gaining about 3 percentage points in the aftermath of the convention. That would be roughly in line with the convention bounces enjoyed by Democratic and Republican nominees in the past three election cycles.
As of Sunday, the poll, which is updated daily, showed Mr. Trump leading Ms. Clinton 45 percent to 41 percent. The lead is within the poll’s margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction, meaning that the apparent lead could be the result of chance.
Mr. Trump led Ms. Clinton by a similar margin a week before the GOP convention started, after the sharp criticism she received from FBI Director James Comey over her handling of classified information in her emails when she was secretary of state. But Ms. Clinton’s support rose in the days immediately before the GOP convention, and the two were tied in the poll for much of the last week.
Though the Republican convention appears to have shifted some voters to Mr. Trump, it also seems to have deepened the intent to vote among Ms. Clinton’s backers.
In addition to asking respondents to rate from zero to 100 the likelihood of their voting for Ms. Clinton, Mr. Trump or for someone else, the Daybreak poll also asks them to rate their likelihood of voting. Among Clinton backers, that likelihood has gone up over the last two weeks by an average of about five points — again, within the poll’s margin of error, but suggesting that recent events may be motivating her supporters.
The poll suggests that Mr. Trump has also started to seem like a plausible winner to more people. Two weeks ago, poll respondents, by 53 percent to 41 percent, said they expected Ms. Clinton to win the presidency. Now, that gap has narrowed significantly, to 50 percent to 44 percent — still a Clinton advantage, but a much tighter one.
A similar increase for Mr. Trump has showed up in some other surveys. A poll by Morning Consult, a polling and media firm, showed him taking a 44 percent to 40 percent lead, the first time he has had the advantage in that poll.
Mr. Trump got a slightly larger increase in the latest CNN/ORC survey — a 6-point bump, which moved him from trailing Ms. Clinton in that poll to leading, 48 percent to 45 percent. When tested in a four-way matchup that included Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and Jill Stein of the Green Party, Mr. Trump led 44 percent to 39 percent, with Mr. Johnson getting 9 percent and Ms. Stein 3 percent, the CNN/ORC poll found.
Not all surveys showed an increase for Mr. Trump. A poll for NBC by SurveyMonkey showed his support flat, with a small gain among Republicans offset by a negative reaction from independents. Like the others, it showed a tight race.
The new polls were being highlighted on the same day that Mr. Trump on Monday gleefully poked at the lack of unity at the Democratic National Convention, and the resignation of party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the aftermath of an email hacking scandal.
“Debbie Wasserman Schultz, I always knew she was highly overrated. Not good,” he told thousands of supporters in a sweltering Roanoke, Va., hotel ballroom. “But she just got fired. They said, ‘Debbie, you’re fired.’ How about that for disloyalty in terms of Hillary Clinton, in all fairness? Because Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been so much for Hillary Clinton.”
Mr. Trump said that politicians are very disloyal, “except for Mike Pence,” the Indiana governor who his new running mate.
“So Debbie was totally loyal to Hillary and Hillary threw her under a bus and it didn’t take her more than five minutes to make that decision,” Mr. Trump said. “Man, I don’t want her covering my back, I’ll tell you that.”
He also said the emails proved that the system was “rigged” against Sen. Bernie Sanders, and predicted the Vermont senator’s followers who have been protesting in Philadelphia would back the Republican ticket.
Mr. Trump also criticized Ms. Clinton’s decision to ask Sen. Timothy Kaine of Virginia — a “weird little dude” — to join the Democratic ticket, saying that he does not represent the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
He also debuted a new, derisive nickname for his Democratic rival: Hillary “Rotten” Clinton.