Clinton And Trump Are Nearly Deadlocked In The Latest General Election Poll

Well, that ended quickly. In the last two weeks, three polls came out showing Hillary Clinton with at least a 12-point lead over Trump. Two of them were from the Washington Post/ABC News and Reuters/Ipsos, while an earlier one from Bloomberg showed a similar margin. However, Wednesday’s Quinnipiac University poll shows no such lead.

According to the poll, Clinton leads Trump by only two percentage points, with 42 percent of voters saying they would vote for her if the election were held on the day they were surveyed. This is compared to 40 percent who would vote for Trump. This poll was conducted from June 21-27, and compares to a June 1 poll, which showed Clinton with a four-point lead. Add in third-party candidates like the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein, then both Clinton and Trump get less voters, but their margin stays the same at 39 percent to 37 percent.

Sixty-one percent of voters polled also lamented the “hatred and prejudice” that this election has stirred up, with 67 percent blaming that tension on Trump, while only 16 percent blame Clinton. Yet both candidates are essentially tied, and both got negative favorability ratings from voters. This negative favorability for both nominees is the takeaway, according to one polling official:

“It would be difficult to imagine a less flattering from-the-gut reaction to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

“This is where we are. Voters find themselves in the middle of a mean-spirited, scorched earth campaign between two candidates they don’t like. And they don’t think either candidate would be a good president.”

Unsurprisingly, the Quinnipiac poll finds women, and black and Hispanic voters favoring Clinton, while white and male voters favor Trump. Voters aged 18-34 favor Clinton, while older voters over 65 chose Trump.

Trump, of course, is capitalizing on this, his first bit of good news in a few weeks:

Yet it’s still early in the general election, with neither party’s conventions even taking place yet. We’ll see if this trend diverges or continues as we get closer to November. In addition, Clinton still has way more money to spend on her campaign than Trump does, who has resorted hitting up European politicians for campaign donations.

(via Quinnipiac University)