Clinton is up 50-38 in the ABC News national tracking poll, with Johnson down to 5% and Stein getting a mere two percent. I can see zero from Jill Stein’s house.
This inaugural 2016 ABC News tracking poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, was conducted Thursday through Saturday among 1,391 adults, including 874 likely voters. This is the first in what will be daily ABC News tracking poll reports from now to Election Day. The Washington Post will join ABC’s tracking survey later this week.
The previous ABC/Post poll found a sharp 12-point decline in enthusiasm for Trump among his supporters, almost exclusively among those who’d preferred a different GOP nominee. Intended participation now has followed: The share of registered Republicans who are likely to vote is down 7 points since mid-October.
Vote preference results among some groups also are striking. Among them:
• Clinton leads Trump by 20 percentage points among women, 55-35 percent. She’s gained 12 points (and Trump’s lost 16) from mid-October among non-college-educated white women, some of whom initially seemed to rally to Trump after disclosure of the videotape.
• Clinton has doubled her lead to 32 points, 62-30 percent, among college-educated white women, a group that’s particularly critical of his response to questions about his sexual conduct. (Seventy-six percent disapprove, 67 percent strongly.)
• That said, Clinton’s also ahead numerically (albeit not significantly) among men, 44-41 percent, a first in ABC News and ABC/Post polling.
• Trump is just +4 among whites overall, 47-43 percent, a group Mitt Romney won by 20 points in 2012. Broad success among whites is critical for any Republican candidate; nonwhites, a reliably Democratic group, favor Clinton by 54 points, 68-14 percent.
Even with the gender gap in candidate support, the results show damage to Trump across groups on the issue of his sexual conduct. While 71 percent of women disapprove of his handling of questions about his treatment of women, so do 67 percent of men. And 57 percent overall disapprove “strongly” – 60 percent of women, but also 52 percent of men. By partisan group, 41 percent of Republican likely voters disapprove of Trump on this question, a heavy loss in one’s own party. That grows to 70 percent of independents and nearly all Democrats, 92 percent.
It didn’t help Trump that he lost all three debates, but I suspect his descent into full-blown InfoWars tinfoil hat bugnuttery is probably the single worst factor contributing to his ninth inning collapse.
It’s hard to say precisely why Republicans are declaring less of an intention to vote, but two main ideas that might explain it come to mind. First, as the consensus grows that he will lose, it just doesn’t seem to matter to a lot of voters if they vote, but this is probably more pronounced for those who anticipate being on the losing side.
Second, by telling people the vote is rigged, Trump may be inadvertently dissuading his own supporters from believing enough in the process to participate in it.
Obviously the sexually assault revelations have turned the stomachs of a lot of erstwhile anti-Clinton voters who may now decline to endorse Trump by actually voting for him.
It all adds up to a swoon, as Trump and the Republicans appear to be fading at the post.
