Washington Post Poll Puts Trump Up 2 Points on Hillary
Yet another poll has come out showing a huge swing in Donald Trump’s favor in the 2016 presidential race, with a new ABC/Washington Post poll showing him with a small lead on Hillary Clinton.
The poll shows Trump leading by two percentage points, 46-44, among registered voters, a massive swing from a March version of the same poll, which showed Clinton leading 50-41.
Notably, the new poll means that for the first time ever, Trump leads Clinton in the rolling poll average on RealClearPolitics. Out of the five most recent major polls, three have shown Trump in the lead.
Trump has a small lead in the poll even though the sample suggested a great deal of weakness in his campaign. The survey asked three questions closely related to Trump’s major campaign issues: Whether trade is creating or cutting U.S. jobs, whether illegal immigrants should be deported, and whether the U.S. should block non-American Muslims from entering the country. Only on trade did a majority back Trump’s position. Fifty percent of adults believed illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S., while only 44 percent wanted deportation, and 50 percent opposed a Muslim ban while 43 percent supported it.
The poll also found that while both Trump and Clinton are viewed unfavorably by voters, Trump has higher overall unfavorability at 60 percent compared to Clinton’s 53 percent.
Stunningly, the swing in Trump’s favor appears to be heavily driven by younger voters. In the March version of the poll, Clinton led 64-25 among 18-29-year-olds. Now, that lead has dropped to a mere 45-42 advantage. In comparison, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in that cohort by 23 percentage points in 2012. The big decline in youth support for Clinton may reflect that youthful supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders have become disaffected with Clinton over the course of a hard-fought Democratic primary campaign. On the other hand, if that is the cause, those voters may eventually rally behind Clinton again once the nomination battle definitively ends, restoring Clinton’s strength.
This isn’t the only poll carrying good news for Trump. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, also released Sunday morning, shows Clinton with a 46-43 lead on Trump. But that three-point gap is much narrower than the 11-point lead she had in April, and also marks the first time this year that she polled below 50 percent against Trump in a WSJ poll.
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