CBS/NYT has a new, national poll out taken over basically the entirety of pneumonia gate.
It has Clinton ahead +2 nationally among LVs and +5 among RVs. The race is tied in the 4 way but I don’t care about that…..yet.
This appears to be a D+5 sample in the weighted sample.
The biggest concern for Hillary at this point appears to be two things, neither of which has anything to do with Trump:
1. Support among millennials — She leads 48-29, which is a 19 point margin, but Obama got to 60% and Romney got to 37% on election day. She’s gotta get that margin up by about 3 points or higher and it would be nice if she could hit 55% (which I think is doable).
2. Voter enthusiasm. Republicans are about 4 points more enthusiastic than Dems among RVs overall according to this poll and 5 points better among the ‘very enthusiastic’ category. This could be influencing the LV screens and the polls like ORC and Bloomberg.
The other demos seem to have the same trends we’ve seen for a while, and they’re pretty good :
HRC up 89-6 among African Americans (not too far from Obama in polling); ahead among 18-44 voters, -2 among 45-64 and -4 among +65 voters, ahead among white coll grads +11, behind among white non-coll grads -26 (but at 32% which is about where Obama was).
There is no breakdown of latino voters, which probably means they didn’t find enough to add to the sample or extrapolate an internal. I think if one added a statistically significant sample of Latinos and Asians to this poll, Hillary’s margin would probably increase by a point or two and the LV/RV gap would probably close a bit.
So here are my thoughts:
*Hillary Clinton has hidden strengths in this general election as she is performing better among white voters than Obama in terms of margin and she is better among older voters (45+). Her margin is about 9 points better than Obama among white voters and about 10 points better among 45+ voters. Some of that is her, some of that is Trump.
*What she needs is about a 3%-5% improvement among young voters in terms of margin and participation to put this thing away. That means focusing on undecideds, new registrants and Johnson/Stein voters. Trump has little to do with that. They’re not reachable for him.
*The other area that could use some improvement is white women. She is +1 right now, an improvement over Obama, but she was running about +6 over the summer if I recall correctly. White women, especially non-college educated white women, really want to know more about her policies. She has to use the debates and her time on the stump to talk about it (not that she hasn’t….I know, I watch every speech, but we all know the media).
*Enthusiasm is a product of her not being on the trail for this past week, and out of public view (perceived) for a good part of the prior 3 weeks. If she gets back on the trail and does her thing (as she was doing last week), those #’s will come up. I also think a good debate performance will also bump up enthusiasm numbers.
*Negative press coverage doesn’t influence older voters but it seems to create a filter with young voters where they are easily disconnected from her. People who expressed a lot of support for her post-convention are in the undecided or Johnson/Stein camp and they’re mostly young.
*Hillary’s support is resilient, but she does need to hit the trail strong and have a good debate performance to maximize her potential vote. By good debate performance, I’m not saying ‘winning’ per a poll. I’m saying getting her message across, her policies across and seeming personable (she does all of that in these forums). The media might be biased against her but the people are inclined to want to vote for her. She just has to show them that she is who she and everyone at the Convention say she is.
*I would also note that this poll is taken at a particularly vulnerable and bad press cycle for Hillary. Take this poll a week later after she has been on the trail and I think we all know she’d probably be a few points higher. (That and adding some latino and Asian voters to a bleepin’ poll!!)
www.cbsnews.com/...
