While most polls show Hillary Clinton cleaning up in the race for the Oval Office as the campaign goes into its last two weeks, a few — including one that turned out to be the most accurate in 2012 — score it a dead heat.
Investors Business Daily Monday morning had the race tied at 41 percent, Rasmussen shows Trump up 43 percent to 41 percent and the Los Angeles Times daily survey has Clinton up by about 1 percent, 45.1 to 43.8 percent.
It was the L.A. Times that recently cited Ernie Tedeschi, an economist and former Treasury Department official, who “found that if he took the poll’s data and weighted it differently, what had been a tie between Trump and Clinton suddenly became a Clinton lead.”
It’s the various models based on demographics and voting history that explain why the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey shows Clinton leading 48 percent to 37 percent and the NBC News Survey Monkey has Clinton leading 46 percent to 40 percent.
The poll regarded during the 2012 race as the most accurate was the IBD.
IBD, showing a dead heat between the leading candidates, had Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson edging up to 8 percent from 7 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein rebounding to 4 percent from 3 percent.
IDB said:
With the race tightening and time running out, Trump on Saturday delivered a symbolic speech at Gettysburg, where he unveiled a sweeping, mostly conservative agenda for his first 100 days — one of the few attempts by the candidate to put forward an actual plan for governing.
Promising to “drain the swamp” in the nation’s capital and “replace it with a new government by and for the people,” Trump vowed to initiate a series of reforms including congressional term limits, a hiring freeze on federal workers (excepting military, safety and health workers) and a major regulatory change: “For every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.”
“It’s a contract between Donald J. Trump and the American voter, and it begins with bringing honesty, accountability and change to Washington, D.C.,” Trump said during his Gettysburg speech.
The report noted Clinton has called for help from President Obama, who now campaigning for her. Trump acknowledged the move, pointing out that when he takes office he would “cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.”
The Drudge Report on Monday focused on the outlier polls:
Clinton herself has made few personal appearances in the final weeks.
With the plethora of damaging emails being released by WikiLeaks, and the undercover videos from Project Veritas in which Democratic operatives openly boast of vote-rigging, Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s spokeswoman, said, “Honest and trustworthy has become our most talked about metric because it’s not great.”
Rasmussen said its survey Monday showing Trump holding a slight edge is unchanged from Friday but includes the second full night of surveying following the final presidential debate last week in Las Vegas.
Rasmussen found that 88 percent of voters say they are now certain how they will vote. Among these voters, Trump holds a statistically insignificant 48 percent to 47 percent lead.
“Most voters still disagree with the FBI’s decision not to seek a criminal indictment of Clinton over her mishandling of classified information when she was secretary of state, and even more rate the issue as important to their vote,” the report said.
The L.A. Times poll found that voters age 35-64 have so far “shown the least volatility,” splitting about evenly between Clinton and Trump.
Trump holds the advantage among those 65 or older. The two candidates have exchanged leads among younger voters.
