The week after the Trump branding tour Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump’s poll numbers soared past Clinton’s previous lead. A week later, Clinton regained the coveted first place status following Philadelphia’s Democratic National Convention. Meanwhile, Harambe the Gorilla garnered higher poll numbers than Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein in early August. In other words, there are a lot of political polls out there, and depending on the people being polled, the subjects they’re being polled about, and the persons conducting the polls, their results tend to vary. A lot.
Like the new CNN/ORC poll indicating that the Republican nominee possesses a two point lead over his Democratic rival just nine weeks before the general election. Per data collected by the Opinion Research Council between September 1 and September 4, 45 percent of likely voters prefer Trump to Clinton (43 percent), Gary Johnson (seven percent), and Stein (two percent). However, since the margin of error sits at plus or minus 3.5 points, Trump’s lead over Clinton among likely voters isn’t absolute. Nor is his standing with registered voters, a metric by which Clinton (44 percent) beat the New York real estate mogul (41 percent) by three points in the same poll.
As for gender, race and other socioeconomic factors, likely and registered voters haven’t veered much from previous results. (That is, African-Americans still don’t like Trump.) Yet as the Washington Post reports, distinguishing between “registered” and “unlikely” isn’t the only flaw in Trump’s apparent lead. For when it comes to attaining the 270 electoral college votes required to win in November, Clinton maintains the advantage. At least that’s according to a massive Post-SurveyMonkey poll, which indicates “Clinton leads by four points or more in 20 states plus the District of Columbia.” This means a possible 244 electoral votes, which is only 26 votes shy of 270.
Trump also leads in 20 states by four points or more, but those states only amount to 126 electoral votes, which puts the Donald a whopping 118 potential electoral votes behind Clinton with two months to go until the election.
(Via CNN and the Washington Post)
