Post-debate, trump gains, Clinton lead narrows
The polling data showed Trump’s argument that the 8 November election is “rigged” against him has resonated with members of his party.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gained on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton among American voters this week, cutting her lead nearly in half, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Friday.
The polling data showed Trump’s argument that the 8 November election is “rigged” against him has resonated with members of his party. “Remember folks, it’s a rigged system,” Trump told a Pennsylvania rally on Friday. “That’s why you’ve got to get out and vote, you’ve got to watch. Because this system is totally rigged.”
Clinton led Trump 44% to 40%, according to the 14-20 October Reuters/Ipsos poll, a 4-point lead. That compared with 44% for Clinton and 37% for Trump in the 7-13 October poll released last week.
An average of national opinion polls by RealClearPolitics shows Clinton 6.2 percentage points ahead at 48.1% support to Trump’s 41.9%.
Trump is slated to give a speech Saturday in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, best known as the site of a decisive Civil War battle and cemetery, and the place where Republican President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous address.
Aides told reporters on Friday night that Trump would make his closing argument to voters in his speech, and preview what he would do in his first 100 days in the White House.
“I think this site is fitting in terms of understanding a positive vision for the Republican party,” an aide said.
Trump’s campaign was thrown into crisis after a 2005 video released this month showed him bragging about groping and kissing women. He has since faced accusations — which he has said are “absolutely false” — that he made improper sexual advances to women over decades.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey found 63% of Americans, including a third of Republicans, believe the New York real estate mogul has com- mitted sexual assault in the past.
Reuters contacted a few of the poll respondents who said they felt that Trump had likely “committed sexual assault” but were still supporting his candidacy. Their answers were generally the same: Whatever Trump did with women in the past is less important to them than what he may do as President.
At a Trump rally in Fletcher, North Carolina, Harold Garren, 75, said he was skeptical of complaints from women about Trump’s behaviour. “I don’t believe all of this 30 years later, no,” Garren said.
Garren also shrugged off Trump’s lewd bragging about women, caught on the 2005 tape. “I’ve used that barnyard language myself,” Garren said, clarifying that it was when he was younger and before he knew better.
Both candidates spent Friday in battleground states, where the vote could swing either way. Clinton, 68, campaigned in Ohio, while Trump, 70, was in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Trump, his voice lacking some of its usual energy in his third rally in one day, told voters in Newtown, Pennsylvania they had to vote or else he would have wasted a lot of “time, energy and money.” Trump has been coy about whether he will accept the results of the election should Clinton beat him.
The Reuters/ Ipsos data showed only half of Republicans would accept Clinton as their President, and nearly 70% of them said a Clinton victory would be because of illegal voting or vote rigging.
Trump’s crowd chanted “Lock her up!” at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania after he declared Clinton a “corrupt globalist,” a reference to campaign documents released by WikiLeaks in which Clinton was quoted advocating free trade and open borders.
After the chant went around the room for several seconds, Trump responded, “Don’t worry, that whole thing will be looked into.”
The New York businessman’s assertion that the election is being rigged and his refusal to commit to accepting the outcome of the election if he loses has challenged a cornerstone of American democracy and outraged Democrats and many Republicans.
Asked if he would commit to a peaceful transition of power during Wednesday’s debate, Trump replied: “What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense. OK?”
In Ohio on Friday, Clinton called his refusal unprecedented. “Now make no mistake: by doing that, he is threatening our democracy,” she told a rally in Cleveland.
“But we know in our country the difference between leadership and dictatorship, right? And the peaceful transition of power is one of the things that sets us apart,” Clinton said.
Trump has offered no widely accepted evidence to back up his claims of voterigging. Numerous studies have shown that the US election system, which is run by the states, is sound.
Trump told an earlier rally in Fletcher, North Carolina, that he wanted to have no regrets about whether he worked hard enough to win the election, and urged followers to get out to vote.
“Win, lose or draw — and I’m almost sure if the people come out, we’re going to win — I will be happy with myself,” he said. “We have to work, we have to get everybody out there.” Win or lose. Donald Trump may or may not be able to “Make America Great Again”. But one thing is sure, American politics will never be the same — and so much fun — again!
The Republican presidential contender though has promised to keep the party going long after the last vote is cast and counted keeping all in “suspense” over whether he would accept the result of what he has dubbed a “rigged” election.
As “horrified” pundits, the President and rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton looked askance at this “attack on democracy”, the brash billionaire assured that “I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win!”
Trump also recalled how Democrat Al Gore first conceded the 2000 presidential election to George Bush and then withdrew his concession when he found that some “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots” in Florida could change the outcome.
Barack Obama, the current tenant of the White House, dismissed Trump’s fears of a “stolen election” as “whining before the game is even over” but his supporters went wild over his “major announcement” at a campaign rally.
With Clinton topping Trump by six-plus points in the first polls after the last debate just 17 days before the 8 November election, the “dishonest liberal media” as he calls it, suggested that the mogul was preparing a ground for his defeat.
Time magazine claimed the reality star was planning to turn his likely loss into a win by setting up a “media entity” and forming a political action committee to exact revenge against “disloyal” Republicans who have deserted him.
The pundits conceded the brash billionaire had delivered his best presidential debate performance, for once focusing on policy issues — jobs, immigration and trade deals — but suggested he had frittered away the gains with his rash declaration.
By disparaging his “groping” accusers, now numbering 10, as fame seekers or agents of Hillary, whom he called “such a nasty woman”, and vowing to throw out “some bad hombres” Trump had lost the two groups he needed most — women and Hispanics.
He had also failed to capitalise on WikiLeaks’ steady dripdrip-drip of revelations from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails, by offering media some juicy morsels of his own to chase.
Stories about Clinton’s key Indian-American aide Neera Tanden suggesting that “her instincts are sub-normal” and “apologies are like her Achilles’ heel” got little play amid Trump’s “bimbo eruptions”.
So did Clinton’s admission to Wall Street bankers about her dream of “a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders” or reports of Clinton Foundation donors’ “expectation of quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts”.
After declining to shake hands at their last debate, the rivals carried their bitter feud to a New York charity dinner that has been a good-natured roast of presidential candidates for decades. “Just before taking the dais, Hillary accidentally bumped into me. And she very civilly said, ‘Pardon me’,” said Trump, as murmurs filled the room, “I very politely replied, ‘Let me talk to you about that after I get into Office’.”
Clinton hit back playing the Russian card. If at the debate she had insinuated that Vladimir Putin’s hackers were trying to put a “puppet” Trump in the White House, she suggested the mogul was “translating from the original Russian” on his teleprompters.
She also wondered “How is Barack going to get past the Muslim ban?” to visit the White House for a traditional reunion with former presidents under a Trump administration.
But given Trump’s meteoric rise as the Republican nominee defeating 16 seasoned politicians, pundits acknowledged there’s still time for an October surprise.
Crowds are still surging at Trump rallies and at least two polls — with one considered the most accurate in recent elections and the other that had correctly forecast the margin of Obama’s victory over Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 — still had him one point ahead.
Another poll found that while Clinton won the final debate handily, over six in 10 undecided or third-party voters said they would vote for Trump over her.
So would he again pull a rabbit out of his hat and “shock the world” with a poll-defying “Brexit-Plus” win or would it turn out to be “the greatest waste of time, money and energy” for Trump?
8 November will tell.