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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Polls Show Clinton Losing Edge in White House Race

(CN) - A bout of pneumonia and a still-roiling controversy over her failure to disclose her diagnosis, aren't the only things causing Hillary Clinton concern as her campaign for the White House entered its final weeks: A series of new polls suggests the race is tightening with Trump even leading in an important battleground state.

However, the news from the pollsters wasn't entirely bad for the ailing candidate, and this was particularly true in California, where one local poll now has her lead at 25 percentage points.

That's likely small solace after an L.A. Times/USC tracking poll showing Trump with a three-point lead nationally, and another showing him up by four points in the battleground state of Florida.

Clinton planned to spend a second day at her home in Chappaqua, New York on Tuesday, after canceling a fundraising trip in California.

Her health became an issue on Sunday after she appeared to swoon while climbing into a waiting van after a commemoration of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan.

Later, Clinton revealed she'd been diagnosed with pneumonia late last week, but ignored her doctor's orders to get some rest and pressed on with a busy campaign schedule.

"I just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal," she said.

With just 56 days to go before election day, Trump has a three-point lead over Clinton in the latest USC Dornsife/L.A. Times Presidential Election "daybreak" poll, which asked 2,665 people about their voting intentions.

The poll is part of the Understanding America Study at the University of California's Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research.

The poll found the GOP standard-bearer leads Clinton 45.8 percent to 42.8 percent, his largest lead in this ongoing analysis of the race since Aug. 31. It should also be noted that the poll is particularly volatile on Sunday, it had Clinton up by one percentage point.

The polls found support for the candidates in close to evenly split among voters age 35 to 64, with Trump holding the advantage when it comes to disaffected white middle-class voters and those who don't have a college degree.

But there's an interesting wrinkle to the USC/L.A. Times poll: A solid majority of participants (52.2 percent) said they still expect Clinton to win. Only 42.3 percent thought Trump will ultimately be victorious.

The positive news for Trump was blunted Monday by an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll, that show Clinton ahead Trump, 48 percent to 44 percent in a two person race, and leading him by two percentage points, 42 percent to 40 percent, when survey participants were asked to consider a four-candidate field that included Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

While the poll showed Clinton is doing well among Democrats and voters who identify themselves as independents, it also suggests that she seen a slight slippage in her numbers over the past week.

The polls conducted online between Sept. 5 and 11 gathered the feedback of 16,220 registered voters.

Clinton's best showing of the week so far was in a KABC/SurveyUSA poll that showed Clinton with a 25 point advantage over Trump among California voters.

The poll, which also asked voters to rate Johnson and Stein, showed Clinton scoring with 57 percent of voter, Trump with 32 percent, the Libertarian with 3 percent and the Green Party candidate with just 1 percent.

A number of polls released early Monday or over the weekend offer a similarly mixed view of the race.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has Clinton 8 percentage points ahead of Trump nationally in a two-person race (and 5 percentage points ahead in the four-person contest).

The latest Gravis poll, released Sunday, showed Clinton up by three points.

According to the latest Utah Policy/Dan Jones poll, Trump is way ahead of Clinton there, with a 15-point advantage in the polls; and in Florida, JMC Analytics' latest survey found Trump has a 4-point lead in the Sunshine State.

Clinton, meanwhile, continues to lead in Michigan, according to the Fox 2 Detroit/Mitchell poll, leading Trump by 5 points in a two-person field, and extending her lead to six points when Johnson and Stein are added to the mix.

The latest average of all the polls compiled by Real Clear Politics shows a tight race, with Clinton leading a four-person field with 41.9 percent of the vote, compared to Trump's 39.9 percent, Johnson's 9 percent and Stein's 2.9 percent.

In a two-person field, Clinton leads Trump nationally, 45,8 percent to 43.4 percent, an advantage of just 2.4 percent.

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