by NEIL W. MCCABE
26 Aug 2016
Washington, D.C.

The 2016 presidential race has tightened into a statistical tie between Democratic Hillary Rodham Clinton at 42 percent and Republican Donald J. Trump at 41 percent, in the latest Breitbart News Network/Gravis Marketing poll of 1,493 likely voters. That puts the negligible one percent difference between Trump and Clinton well below the poll’s margin of error of 2.5 percent, meaning this is a tie ball game heading into the home stretch of the election.

In the four-way presidential race poll, Libertarian Gary Johnson comes in at just four percent and Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein at just one percent.

“This presidential race is a real dogfight,” said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, the Florida-based firm that conducted the poll using automated phone calls Aug. 22 to Aug. 23.

“Trump picking up four points is a big move,” he said. “Clinton is stuck at 42 percent, which is where she was in the last Breitbart/Gravis presidential poll we did Aug. 9.”

In the last Breitbart/Gravis poll, Clinton led Trump 42 percent to 37 percent, he said. Johnson was at 9 percent and Stein was at three percent. In the Aug. 9 poll there were 7 percent unsure compared to 9 percent of voters unsure in the new poll.

In the 2012 presidential race, incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama beat Republican nominee Mitt Romney 51 percent to 47 percent, Kaplan said.

“Last time, both Clinton and Trump lagged 10 points behind their party’s nominee in 2012,” he said. “The question the Democrats might want to start asking is: ‘Why is Hillary still 10 points back compared to Obama?’”

Kaplan said as the campaign approaches Labor Day, the traditional start of the campaign’s final phase, he looks for the race to remain tight with Trump and Clinton working to convince the undecided voters.

Trump’s surge back into contention comes after he shook up his campaign’s inner circle, bringing in pollster KellyAnne Conway as his new campaign manager and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon as his campaign CEO. Bannon has taken a leave of absence until election day to serve as Trump’s campaign’s CEO. In the wake of the shakeup Trump has severely rattled Clinton with a series of tactical moves and addresses like his decision to visit flood-ravaged Louisiana while Barack Obama vacationed on a golf course in Martha’s Vineyard and Hillary Clinton fundraised with Cher and other Hollywood celebrities in both Beverly Hills and on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. All that happened as Trump pre-empted a Thursday speech by Clinton meant to label him a racist, undercutting her core message by labeling it “desperate” before she gave it. Even Democrats, meanwhile, view Hillary Clinton’s speech denouncing the “alt-right” as “unhinged”, says Christian Rickers, Trumpocrats executive director and lifelong Democrat but now Trump supporter, as more and more lifelong Democrats nationwide leave the Democratic Party under Clinton’s control to vote for Trump.

Although the top line poll is a virtual tie, inside the polls there are examples of how divided the American electorate is going into November.

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presid...ending-august/