Trump Faces Hurdle With Minority Voters as Clinton Maintains Lead, Poll Shows
Trump Faces Hurdle With Minority Voters as Clinton Maintains Lead, Poll Shows
by Hannah Hartig, John Lapinski and Stephanie Psyllos
Aug 23 2016, 6:00 am ET
Hillary Clinton continues to hold a large national lead over Donald Trump, 50 percent to 42 percent, weeks after the Democratic National Convention.
Clinton's 8-point advantage is virtually unchanged from her 9-point lead last week, and she has seen similar margins since the end of July. These results are according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll among registered voters.
In a four-way general election match-up, Clinton holds a 5-point margin over Trump 43-38 percent, while Libertarian Gary Johnson garners 11 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets 5 percent.
Over the past week, Trump's campaign team saw major staffing changes. The changes coincided with Trump acknowledging that he regretted some of his comments on the campaign trail and a shift in targeting non-white voters. During campaign rallies over the weekend, Trump said the Republicans must "do better" with African-American voters and predicted he would get over 95 percent of support from black voters if he were to run in a re-election campaign in 2020.
Trump faces a steep climb if he is to win non-white voters. Results from the latest tracking poll show that only 8 percent of black voters support him, compared to 87 percent who support Clinton. Trump is also behind among Hispanic voters with 22 percent compared to 73 percent who support Clinton. Asian Americans also overwhelmingly support Clinton, 66 percent to 23 percent who support Trump.
Race relations will likely continue to be a campaign issue through November, and the latest tracking poll found that 65 percent of registered voters think race relations in the United States are getting worse. Just under a quarter said race relations are staying about the same and only 10 percent said they think race relations are getting better. Majorities across all racial groups — white, black, Hispanic and Asian American voters — said they think race relations are getting worse in this country.
While a majority of supporters among both candidates think race relations are getting worse, Trump supporters seem to be less optimistic. Among Clinton supporters, 54 percent think race relations in the United States are getting worse, 31 percent think they are staying about the same and 15 percent think race relations are getting better. Among Trump supporters, 78 percent think race relations are getting worse, 16 percent think they are staying the same and only 5 percent think they are getting better.
Gender continues to be an important demographic this election season. While Trump is ahead among men by 6 points — 43 percent to 49 percent — Clinton is ahead among women by 21 points — 56 percent to 35 percent.
Although Clinton is the first female to be nominated for president by a major political party, 55 percent of voters still think that society has not reached the point where women and men have equal opportunities for achievement; 43 percent said society has reached the point of equal opportunity for both genders.
Among women, 66 percent said society has not reached the point where women and men have equal opportunities, and 32 percent of women said society has reached the point of gender equality. Among men, however, 56 percent said society has reached the point of equal opportunity and 42 percent of men said society has not gotten there yet.
An overwhelming majority of Clinton supporters — 74 percent — said society has not reached the point of gender equality. Only a quarter of Clinton supporters said society has reached the point of equal opportunity. Among Trump supporters, though, 65 percent said society has reached the point of gender equality and only 34 percent said society has not reached that point yet.
The NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll was conducted online August 15 through August 21, 2016 among a national sample of 17,459 adults who say they are registered to vote. Respondents for this non-probability survey were selected from the nearly three million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Results have an error estimate of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points. For full results and methodology, click here.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016...l-shows-n63606
