Donald Trump’s connection to Republican voters surprised the party’s establishment, which initially had the choice of 16 other presidential candidates, all GOP politicians with experience in high office who had bided their time and were ready to make the big leap.
With unabashed bluntness, Trump jumped into the race, promised American voters he would make “America great again” and captured the nomination by the old-fashioned method of getting the most votes.
But that shouldn’t have mattered to Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic Party nominee, with a behemoth political machine built over decades, a former president (her husband) and a sitting president on her side, international connections gathered as secretary of state, a power base developed as a senator from New York state and the experience of taking on issues such as health care when she was first lady.
So why are polls not showing a looming landslide for Clinton? In fact, why are they now indicating the battle is a real horse race?
The USC/Los Angeles Times daily tracking poll even showed Trump leading by three points on Tuesday.
According to new polling data from Reuters, Trump closed a 12-point polling gap with Clinton in five days. The candidates were statistically tied with Trump at 39.1 percent and Clinton at 39.7 percent on Monday.
Indeed, with two months to go before the election, many national polls show Trump has been closing the gap since Clinton took a double-digit lead following the Democratic National Convention. An overview of national polls indicates a Clinton margin of about three to five points, mostly with margin of error.
All of this means that the race is anything but decided, even though television pundits regularly leave the impression that Trump may as well go on vacation now. In fact, Politico reported back in May when Trump was taking control of the GOP race that pundits were completely unconvinced of his legitimacy.
“Long before Donald Trump descended the grand escalator at Trump Tower to declare his candidacy …. conservative pundits and nonpartisan clairvoyants alike had laughed off the possibility of the real-estate mogul turned reality TV star ascending to the party’s pinnacle, joining the ranks of Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln,” Nick Gass wrote at Politico.
Analyst Bill Kristol at the time said he expected Trump not “to be an issue,” because he wouldn’t be the nominee. And Jacob Weisberg wrote for Slate, “The best-case scenario for the GOP would be Trump facing facts and backing out of the primary before the Cleveland convention in mid-July.”
Just days ago, Fox News host Shepard Smith said on social media, “A new poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 10 points nationally as the two candidates trade racially charged accusations.”
With the vast majority of Americans believing their country, under Obama and with Clinton in an executive role, has moved in the wrong direction, why does the media continues to insist a Clinton landslide is inevitable?
And if that message continues through November, will it have an impact on voters?
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline blog, noting the tightening race, said Clinton’s negatives – her handling of Benghazi, and the email and Clinton Foundation scandals – have been dragging her down.
“Concerns over Hillary’s corruption are thus revived and/or intensified,” he wrote.
“For another, Trump is working hard to reinvent himself as a kinder, gentler blowhard. His outreach to Hispanics, via a revised stance of illegal immigration, and to African-Americans may be helping with the electorate in general.
“It’s not, I assume, that Trump is winning fans. But it may be that, for some voters, he’s crossing the line between blanket unacceptability and reluctant acceptance given the unpalatable and corrupt alternative,” he said.
Mirengoff cited the estimate of Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight that Clinton’s national lead was at 6.5 percentage points.
That’s down from 8.5 points just a few days earlier.
“What do polls from swing states show? Silver says that last week they were ‘all over the place.’ But today comes good news for Trump from three big states: Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan,” the analysis said.
Mirengoff pointed out that the USC/Los Angeles Times daily tracking poll “has consistently found this race to be closer than other national surveys.”
The Times polling showed Trump building a huge lead during the GOP convention and Clinton subsequently building a small lead during the Democratic convention.
The charts show that each time Clinton’s lead grows, it soon falters.
The survey asks “Who would you vote for?” which resulted in the 45.1 to 42.3 lead for Trump, as well as “Who do you think will win?” which gave Clinton a 54-40 lead.
NBC’s poll found no bump for Trump from the GOP convention, and CNN found Clinton received a 12-point boost from the Democratic convention.
David Byler at Real Clear Politics said the periods around the conventions are the “most tumultuous” in general election polling.
After that, the “polls tend to stabilize and start to give a better sense of which candidate is likely to win the White House.”
So what is happening now?
Leada Gore at AL.com reported on Tuesday that a Monmouth University poll showed Trump surging. Clinton was up by seven points in the latest survey, “a smaller margin than the Democratic Party presidential nominee enjoyed after her party’s national convention.”
“The margin has narrowed since her post-convention bounce, but Clinton is holding onto an underlying advantage over Trump among key voting blocs,” claimed Patrick Murray, the chief of the polling institute that did the work.
His results showed Clinton’s support among Democrats was at 85 percent, down from 92 percent earlier. Trump was backed by 78 percent of the GOP, unchanged from earlier.
He pointed out that 51 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, and 57 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
More than one in three have a negative opinion of both.
“The number of voters who cannot bring themselves to voice a positive opinion of either presidential nominee is more than three times higher than in any other election in recent memory. This is unprecedented,” Murray said.
But UPI reported this week Clinton retaking her lead, 49 to 46.
Trump had been ahead earlier in the week, essentially wiping out Clinton’s double-digit convention bounce.
The New York Daily News cited polling results in concluding, “Clinton’s month-long post-convention bounce could be coming to an end.”
Some of the early polling didn’t even include Trump, as an image from Business Insider reveals.
Maybe there’s another way to look at the battle: Count the cars.
Autolist.com on Tuesday told WND that its own newly released poll showed Clinton with a narrow, within the margin of error, 40-38 percent lead over Trump “among current vehicle owners.”
The website said the most common vehicle for a Clinton supporter is a Honda Civic, and the most common for a Trump supporter is a Ford F-150. Also, Clinton supporters are 30 percent more likely to buy a hybrid, and Trump voters are 17 percent more likely to favor horsepower and torque when buying a vehicle.
“As the survey shows, the November presidential race is yet to be decided among the vehicle owner population, but the buying preferences of the committed voters of the two different candidates are as different as the candidates themselves,” Autolist.com said.
